


Music of the Night

by Aspareme



Category: Hellsing, Hellsing Ultimate, Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Phantom of the Opera, F/M, If You Squint - Freeform, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-06-16 23:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15448086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aspareme/pseuds/Aspareme
Summary: They met in the winter of 1899, just after supper.Integra had made a series of catastrophic mistakes, starting with begging to go to the circus. The chorus girls had been talking about it for weeks. None had invited Integra, of course, but she’d still loved the sound of the pageantry.She’d asked Papa if she could join the ballerinas while he and Uncle Richard talked about business. He’d nodded to Walter and so off they’d gone.That had been her first mistake.





	1. Overture

**Author's Note:**

> \-- Your Cast --  
> A tortured man who loathes the light of day and is repulsed, and found repulsive by, the world at large.  
> A pragmatic woman with nerves of steel and a temper to match, who suffers fools never.  
> A charming ingenue with hereto untapped depths, drawn into a web of intrigue.  
> A dashing rogue and a shameless flirt, whose bravery is tested by love. 
> 
> In other words: Phantom of the Opera, as played by your cast of degenerates, stoics and general miscreants.

_I write this now, in full knowledge that it will be commended only to history, or perhaps to myth._

 

_It is, after all, a very strange story. The legend of the_ Phantom of the Opera _…_

 

_My dear angel always did have a flair for the dramatic._

 

 

Seras stares at the page helplessly, pen wavering in her grip. She is… nervous, she can admit, if only to herself. Anything after this starts to taste a little bit like confessional, and that speaks of finality. But...

 

 

_Even love stories have endings._

 

 

xx

 

 

They met in the winter of 1899, just after supper. 

 

Integra had made a series of catastrophic mistakes, starting with begging to go to the circus. The chorus girls had been talking about it for weeks. None had invited Integra, of course, but she’d still loved the sound of the pageantry.

 

She’d asked Papa if she could join the ballerinas while he and Uncle Richard talked about business. He’d nodded to Walter and so off they’d gone. 

 

That had been her first mistake. 

 

Once the novelty has worn off, Integra doesn’t much care for it. It’s loud and far too bright; her eyes ache and so do her toes pinched into their new patent-leather shoes. She had followed a few of the older chorus girls into this tent on a dare and regrets it instantly. 

 

Walter’s disapproving glare discourages the unsavoury characters surrounding her from crowding too close, but it also means she’s able to get a clear look at the monster in the cage. 

 

The first thing she notices is the sackcloth mask. It shrouds his face, with holes at his eyes. The eyes themselves are grey, and wild, and aware, but the mask is a horror unto itself. Rough burlap, with a crude smile painted in ink… it’s deliberately cruel. 

 

Under it, the monster has spindly legs, knobby knees and elbows, and dirty hands that he’s using to eat his dinner anyways. 

 

Which, she notices, is a thin bowl of broth with a few pieces of salt pork on the side to gnaw on. The boy promptly does, gulping at the soup and snarling at anyone who’d come too close to the bars. 

 

He doesn’t seem to know how, or care, to share, and eats his food with the efficiency of necessity. Integra realizes why when the cold-eyed barker steps into the cage. He reeks of liquor and his smile is leering; he wears a small length of rope on his belt. Integra despises him on sight. The poor creature in the sackcloth cringes away from him like a kicked cur, and Integra feels anger spark in the pit of her belly. 

 

It congeals into rage when the man reaches down and grabs hold of the mask so quickly that the boy cries out. They struggle for the mask, briefly. His face is still shrouded but every now and again his thrashing pulls the fabric tight around contours; cheek and eye, and once, horrifically, a gnashing mouth. The effect is eerie, but the eyes behind the mask aren’t mad. 

 

They’re furious. 

 

His voice is quite low, she realizes, surprised. The boy’s so slight she’d thought he was younger than her, but it would appear she’d been wrong. It doesn’t matter, though, because he’s no match for the man and his blows. Eventually, the hands and eyes drop, and Integra sees his face. There are gasps and squeals of disgust around her, but Integra holds fast and looks. 

 

Really _looks._

 

He’s disfigured, to be sure, but it isn’t at all ugly compared with the humiliation in the boy’s eyes. When the monster tosses the hateful burlap sack back to the boy, he scrambles to put it on again. She averts her gaze; she doesn’t want him to think she’s gawking. 

 

Integra feels acutely ashamed to be watching this, and when the rest file out, she follows with flaming cheeks. In the crush, the clasp of her necklace snaps. The pendant falls to the straw on the floor, glinting in the half-light. 

 

Integra is too wholly mortified to notice, and that is her second mistake. 

 

The boy’s watching Integra as she leaves. She notices that; she can feel his eyes on her back as she walks away. 

 

It takes her five minutes to notice her missing necklace; a gloved hand reaches up, marking its absence around the curl of her throat, and descends. “Walter”, she says, “I’ve lost my pendant.”

 

“Ah, so you have”, he says after a moment’s inspection, already starting to peer around as though it might be hiding behind a food stall. His nose crinkles in disgust. “You’ll have a devil of a time finding it here. Mightn’t it be best to alert the authorities, Miss Integra?” 

 

“That might be an over-reaction, for now. Perhaps it’s only been dropped? I’ll retrace my steps; it might be back in that last… exhibit. I’ll not be a moment.” 

 

She has always been persuasive, and now it works in her favour. 

 

Walter considers the scene and nods. 

 

It’s close enough by, and she knows Walter served with her Papa on campaign. Nobody will tell her precisely what they did; only that it made Papa even wealthier and Walter all the more loyal. 

 

It’s why Walter has always been her chaperone, she’s sure of it. There’s no one else Papa trusts half so much. She doubts there’s anywhere in this circus he couldn’t reach in a heartbeat, so she’s safe as houses. 

 

“Back in a second”, she promises, and makes for the tent. That is her third mistake.

 

With the lights off, it’s even eerier than before, and she shivers as she steps inside. There’s a shape in the cage, and she recoils at the thought of the boy in there. _Is he caged all the time?_ But then the figure splits into two, large and small, thick and scrawny, and Integra’s medusa-knotted stomach plummets. 

 

Then the monster makes his mistake. He leans down, hisses something into the boy’s ear, and laughs. 

 

Integra sees the silhouette of the boy lunge, scaling up the man’s back with a manic burst of strength. She watches the blackness of his silhouette as it wraps a length of rope around the man’s throat. She tries not to notice that the ends are wrapped around his wrists. The man scrabbles at the rope, fiercely at first, then frantically, then feebly, and then finally not at all. He hits the floor with a meaty thump.

 

In the awful silence, Integra hears ragged, muffled breathing. It sounds like sobbing.

 

The noise is soon drowned out by shouting, and she reacts instinctively. Integra hauls him out of the cage and has the presence of mind to hiss _run!_  at him before she leads him by the wrist through the back alleys of Paris. Once they have evaded their pursuit, she pauses to catch her breath, lungs heaving in the restricting corset she's only just begun to wear. 

 

“Left at the Boulevard de Chagny, then straight. On the Rue Leroux, turn left. The Opera Populaire. There will be a grate in the wall. There are steps inside; open it and climb down. It will take you to the basement of the opera house; go below that to the sublevels. You’ll know it when you see it. Stay there. I will find you.” 

 

When he openly stares at her, she gives him a little shove. “Go! Before they find you!”, she snaps, and that’s enough to get him moving. 

 

He slips into the shadows far too easily, but Integra watches until after he’s long disappeared. Only then does she make her way back to the circus.

 

Which is how Integra ends up giving sanctuary to a circus freak in her father’s basement, and getting the dressing-down of her life from Walter for disappearing.

 

It would appear, _“I wanted to see the murder scene!”_ , is not an appropriate response for a young lady of gentle breeding. She can’t help but feel he’s somehow more disappointed that she didn’t invite him, than by her disappearance or insubordination. 

 

Nevertheless, it’s worth Walter’s sour face just to see the look on the boy’s face when she brings him a hot meal. He sidles around her like a stray dog, sticking to the shadows and peering up with hangdog eyes. He’s wearing the burlap mask again.

 

_Vlada_ _is my name_ , he announces the next morning through a mouthful of bread thick with butter and lavished with raspberry jam. She smiles back at the mask and the eyes and says, “Hullo, Vlada. My name’s Integra. It’s very nice to meet you.” 

 

She teaches him how to shake hands firmly, and smiles despite the smears of red he leaves on her gloves. She’ll have to change them, and wash them herself, or Walter will have cause to wonder. Then his eyes narrow in regard, and his jam-sticky hand drops to his pocket. She doesn’t flinch away; if he’d wanted to hurt her, he’d have done it by now. 

 

He lifts something and holds it in his palm, and for a second Integra doesn’t see what he’s looking at. When he carefully deposits the silver cross pendant into her open palm, her smile is bright as a sunbeam.

 

“I thought I’d lost this! Thank you, Vlada”, she says, delighted, and he ducks his shoulders as though unused to the weight of the compliment. “It’s a gift from my father; I was missing it!” 

 

“Welcome”, he mutters, and she grins. “Now”, Integra says, “to business.”

 

“Business?” 

 

“Yes. What do we do now? You certainly can’t go back, and you can’t exactly go out.” 

 

“I know”, the boy says, burlap mask wilting downwards. “I’m not… I am too deformed to be seen.” He seems to mean it, and she shakes her head. 

 

“No… I meant…”, she pauses, considers her words and gives it up as a bad job. “You’re probably wanted for murder, and you’re easy to describe and hard to miss. So you’re stuck here, unless we can think of an alternative.”

 

When he gawps at her, she blushes in sudden embarrassment. 

 

“Sorry. I have an awful bedside manner.” 

 

“No. We. You said we.” 

 

“I did.” She wonders if that had been a faux-pas, but the mask hides his thoughts and expressions. 

 

“I have never been a  _we_.” He says this as though it isn’t breaking Integra’s heart. “It is nice.” 

 

“Try it.” 

 

His shoulders tense up, and then seem to deliberately release. 

 

“ _We_ … will think of something to do, Integra.” 

 

Integra grins, wide and fierce, at her new, first, friend. “Yes, we will.” 


	2. Marche Funebre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s not charity! You are the most stubborn person I have ever met!”, Integra snaps, and Vlada stares at her with unabashed hurt. Both of his eyes are wet with tears, and his expression is a rictus of pain. 
> 
> The fabric obscuring part of his face is, of course, emotionless. 
> 
> She hates it and, for a heartbeat, him. 
> 
> Or at least his self-loathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the full experience: "Down Once More/Track Down This Murderer" from the 2004 Soundtrack was pretty much on permanent repeat while this was being written.

_But they also have beginnings._

 

—

 

“You think that I care about this?! You’re speaking to me of per annum and box assignments while some maid packs your bags! You are leaving me, Integra, and you think I care about money?!” 

 

“Sweet Christ”, Integra spits in absolute fury. “I was trying to provide for you! I thought you would be relieved!” 

 

“I won’t take your charity! Or is it a bribe?” 

 

He sounds insulted. This isn’t going to plan. 

 

She’s going to lose him if she’s not careful, but her words are so vinegary they’re three-quarters pickled by the time they reach his ears. 

 

“It’s not charity or a bribe, and you are the most stubborn person I have ever met!”, Integra snaps, and Vlada stares at her with unabashed hurt. Both of his eyes are wet with tears, and his expression is a rictus of pain. 

 

The fabric obscuring part of his face is, of course, emotionless. 

 

She hates it and even, for a vanishingly brief second, him. 

 

Or at least his self-loathing.

 

“You’re being bloody awful!"

 

He makes a strangled noise. “Me?! I’m awful!? You’re the one who’s leaving!” 

 

“Papa has been sent by His Majesty to be the Lieutenant-Governor, and he’s said I’m to go as well!” She glares at him. “It’s not as though I have a choice, Vlada!” Integra wants very badly to stamp her foot; instead she pours all her temper into her glare. He stares back, bereft.

 

“Tell him… for school…” 

 

“Oh, Vlada”, she sighs, not without sympathy. “I'd go to boarding school, you know. I’d live in the dorms. India or the countryside; in either case, I’d have to go away.” 

 

“You’re leaving me, Integra”, he gasps like a hanged man, and she nods. 

 

“Yes, I am. I must. I don’t want to leave home, Vlada, you must believe me. Everyone is here. The theatre is here…” Integra pauses, and then blurts out, “You’re here!” 

 

“You little _Delilah_! Don’t lie to me! You leave, _everyone_ leaves! But you’re worse. _You_ promised not to!” It’s an awful accusation, and true. She had. 

 

He’s growing more agitated by the moment and she knows she has to get a handle on this situation before it goes truly to pot. She just has no idea how.

 

“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?! I'm coming back. This is my home!” 

 

“And I just _live_ in it!”, he snarls, hands in his hair, and she gawps at him. 

 

“Yes. You do, and I’m _glad_ you do. You’re my dearest friend, Vlada! I’ll write, all the time… and then I’ll be home as soon as I can. I’ll help Papa manage the theatre, and it’ll be as though nothing ever happened!” 

 

“That’s naive, Integra. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. You’ve only just broken one”, he says with a gritty weariness that makes Integra grindingly sad.

 

What’s worst is that he’s right. 

 

This move changes things, and much as Integra gnashes her teeth, she can’t deny it. Vlada, as she had anticipated, isn’t taking it well. 

 

It’s as though all the fight’s drained out of him, or else the strings cut out from him. He slumps into the chair she’d appropriated from the props department for him, shoulders sagging, elbows on his thighs and head hanging down. 

 

He perches in his chair, lanky as a spider, but Integra takes a step closer, and then another until she stands before him. 

 

Even seated, he’s almost as tall as she is now. 

 

She doesn’t know when that happened and dreads what awaits her when she returns. Will it be a man she doesn’t recognize? Assuming he even chooses to acknowledge her, she supposes. 

Integra is aware of how unforgiving, Vlad can be.

 

But there’s nothing for it. 

 

Nobody else can do this for her, and like a battlefield amputation, it must be done.

 

“I’m sorry, Vlada. I need to go.” 

 

She feels sick, mind whirling with the dreadful revelation that it might be years before she sees him again. Integra tastes the sting of angry tears in the back of her nose. 

 

“I’ll come back, just as soon as I can. I promise.” She pauses and then decides. “I wanted you to have this”, she whispers and unlatches the silver cross from around her neck. She presses the simple pendant into his palm and curls his fingers around it. 

 

He stares at her with unreadable eyes. He’s already returned that pendant once. 

 

“Collateral”, she lies, and he purses his lips. “I’ll want it back. Take care of it for me?” 

 

She leans down, hands resting lightly on his shoulders, and presses her lips gently to the crown of his head. 

 

He sighs with such sorrow that Integra’s heart aches like a bitten tongue. 

 

She steps back, again and again. Not because she’s afraid to turn her back on him, but because the sight of him is dear to her. She doesn’t want to miss a single moment. He never looks up, as though he can’t bear to watch 

 

She doesn’t cry, not until much later, when the steamer carrying the new Lieutenant-Governor of India and his family has set sail into the blue and Integra is alone in her suite. Even then, she cries silently, biting down on her lip until she can taste copper. 

 

But true to her word, she writes him often and at length. 

 

She sends the letters in bulk, but for the next six years, receives no reply. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're curious: Integra rescues Vlad when they're both about 12. They are both 15 here.


	3. Fantasia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me? 
> 
> Perhaps I shouldn’t ask that, and I fear you will think less of me for doing so, but it’s true. I do miss you, most terribly, and I am sorry I broke my promise. I only wish there had been some way for me to keep my word.
> 
> On occasion, I have caught myself turning to my left to share some observation, or peering into every shadow in the hopes of seeing you smiling back at me.  
> You always managed to find me at my most lonesome, and never failed to cheer me up. 
> 
> I wish you were here.
> 
> I think of you fondly and dearly miss your company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fantasia  
> A Renaissance musical form characterized by a basso continuo, and an improvised melody that tends towards the romantic.

_The woman I called Mssr. Integra was not what one might call maternal, and indeed she was not anyone’s mother. But she was older and fiercer, and a genius in the theatre, and I quickly came to respect her._

 

Seras’ hand flies on the page, overwhelmed by the urge to put a memory of the formidable Mssr. to paper.

 

_She smoked foul cigars and had a tendency towards prowling backstage, and only the Maestro seemed immune. They were a unit, seamless with the ease of long practice. Like a dancer and their music, they were inseparable._

 

They never disagreed publicly, or at least, not that Seras had ever seen. It had been likewise impossible to come between them. 

 

She recalled one instance when the Maestro had been giving her a dressing-down over her shoddy vibrato, her poor posture, and everything else under the sun. She must have looked to the Mssr. for mercy. 

 

She had found none at all. 

 

“Stop whinging, chorus girl”, Integra had snapped, never once looking up from the folio in front of her. This month’s revenues, no doubt, or else something equally dull and important. Her tone had been brisk and pitiless. “I don’t care how many times he makes you go over the glissando, you’ll do it one more time for good measure. And stand up straight! You’re English; have some grit.” 

 

Seras’ spine had snapped upwards like a ruler-crack.

 

It’s funny in hindsight, and Seras smiles at the memory. Mssr. Integra had been a strict, but superb, tutor. 

 

_The Mssr. was a woman who enjoyed her idiosyncrasies, and who was devoted wholly to her responsibilities. The opera company imagined that she had appeared fully formed, Minerva struck from Zeus’ brow. Only a very select and fortunate few knew otherwise._

 

_We all knew she maintained a lively correspondence as part of her responsibilities, but after going through her effects, I came to realize she also found considerable joy in it._

 

_It had by all accounts been a lifelong hobby. The first letters to the Maestro date back to just after her father’s appointment to India when she was a girl._

 

 

 

 

 

_~~_

 

_April 20th, 1902  
_

 

_Dear Vlada —_

 

_I am writing to say how very much I miss you. I know you’re likely still furious at my departure, but I can’t bear the thought of you angry with me. And you can be quite wrathful, you know. I’ve seen you before, when you’re angry. I know what it’s like when you hate someone and pray you don't hate me. Not because I am frightened of ending up like that awful man in the cage, but because I care for you too deeply to have wanted to do you such harm._

 

_~~_

 

The Mssr. had not been a demonstrative woman; she had been the opera’s beating heart, and could not afford to waver in that pulse. She had been the most dignified person Seras had ever met. The first time she had seen her, that close to the chill of Christmas with eyes remote and proud as the star of Bethlehem, she had thought she was seeing an angel. 

 

“Do not be afraid”, the Mssr. had told that shivering girl, with a voice warm and calm as coals. “You are safe now.” She held out her hand, palm up, and it was steady. 

 

And Seras had not been frightened, only awed. 

 

_~~_

 

_June 27th, 1902_

 

_Forgive me?_

 

_Perhaps I shouldn’t ask that, and I fear you will think less of me for doing so, but it’s true. I do miss you, most terribly, and I am sorry I broke my promise. I only wish there had been some way for me to keep my word._

 

_On occasion, I have caught myself turning to my left to share some observation, or peering into every shadow in the hopes of seeing you smiling back at me._

_You always managed to find me at my most lonesome, and never failed to cheer me up._

 

_I wish you were here._

 

_I think of you fondly, and dearly miss your company._

 

_Write soon!_

 

_Your friend,_

 

_Integra F.W Hellsing_

 

_~~_

 

There had been a small ink smudge on the paper, a raised welt of long-dried water. 

 

_My tempestuous Maestro, and his even more intimidating patron. What a pair, the two of them. Him with his flair for the dramatic, and mad genius… and her — known even by friends as a cast-iron bitch with a bone-dry wit. I can’t imagine them as childhood friends, and yet, they must have been, for there was the proof._

 

_She had wept over her letters to him._

 

There were thousands of them, over a span of _years_. It seemed as though she’d started writing almost as soon as the ship had sailed and continued faithfully; each letter growing more despondent as responses failed to materialize. 

 

~~

 

_August 29th, 1902_

 

_— and you’re childish! I mean it, Vlada; it’s been four months, and I haven’t merited so much as a drop of ink from that damnable pen of yours! Am I not worth the effort of dipping your quill?!_

 

_You’ve all manner of nerve, Vlada, and I mean to smack you for it when next I see you, just as long as I can hug you first._

 

_I pray that day comes quickly. I miss you very much, even if you are terribly vexing!_

 

_Write soon—_

 

_I.F.W H_

 

_~~_

 

Seras had never spoken of it to anyone. Her Maestro and his Mssr. would not have appreciated her being indiscreet, and she’d had no desire to be. They had been private people; Seras did not intend to change that now. 

 

_But Mssr. Integra, at least, had been a steadfast diarist, albeit a shoddy epistolarian._

 

_She had never been one for displays of emotion, although the Maestro had never seemed to have a problem with it. He had been theatrical enough for the both of them._

 

_Yet for all his dramatics in person, the Maestro never wrote back. The years passed in one-sided silence, unwinding like a spool of yarn with interminable slowness as the Mssr. grew into a young woman. She, for her part, never ceased to write._

 

_~~_

 

 

_December 3rd,1903_

 

_Clementine announced she was engaged yesterday. She looks radiant, and I am happy for her, but it made me realize something: I don’t think I’m meant for the life of a society wife, Vlada. I don’t have a desire to marry and be someone’s little wife! I want to be glorious._

 

_I’m relieved Papa does not seem to insist. I suppose if he wants an heir, I will have to be it. I can’t say I’m upset; I have plans for that theatre, and I can’t wait to share them with you!_

 

_~~_

 

Seras had smiled to read that; her dear Mssr. had known, even then, that destiny had a role for her. But she’d also had an infamously short temper and a well-hidden tendency towards cheek.

 

If her silent confessor had any thoughts on the matter, he wisely kept them to himself. 

 

~~

 

_January 01, 1904_

 

_Vlad —_

 

_I know now that you are either ignoring my letters unread, or you are capable of unimaginable cruelty towards me._

 

_What else could explain this interminable punishment?_

 

_Either my pleas have fallen on deaf ears, or else you have read my letters and found me so beneath your notice so as to be unworthy of even a little response._

 

_I choose to believe that you are stubborn, not sadistic. I shall find out one day, and box your ears for it regardless!_

 

_I wonder… have you burnt the letters? Buried them, perhaps, or shredded them sight unseen? Are they tossed into an office somewhere, relegated to the bottom of a drawer in that nightmarish mess you call your studio…_

 

_Or do I dare ask if they rest under your mattress, out of sight and mind?_

 

_I do dare to imagine that they rest under your pillow, protecting your dreams from all menace…_

 

_I am a little fool, but a brave one never the less._

 

_You are not sadistic. Therefore, you are not reading these, and so I shall confide in you, my dearest diary, and have confidence that this shall never see the light of day._

 

_Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate._

 

_Serves you right, you arrogant idiot. Dear Diary_ indeed, _Vlada._

 

_\- I._

 

 

~~

 

 

Such was the Mssr.’s force of character that the threat had carried, even in ink. 

 

She had made good on it as well. The subsequent letters had been vastly more candid. Even now, the tips of Seras’ ears flushed red simply to think of them.

 

 

~~

 

_August 30, 1907_

 

_“—I watched the stars tonight and found that they were no longer distant and indifferent. They are nothing at all like the ones back home, of course. The constellations are different, for one; the humidity in the air here makes them twinkle much more._

 

_And the air! It’s delicious, Vlada, like nothing I’ve ever smelled before._

 

_I’ll have to find out what it is so I can bring some home for you._

 

_No news as to when that shall be, but it can’t come soon enough… I miss you very much, Vlada, and wish you were here with me, experiencing this by my side._

 

_You would love it as much as I do, I think; it’s beautiful at night._

 

_It’s a lovely dream to entertain but my fondest fantasy, the one I turn to when I am most lonely, is the one where I am home beside you._

 

_Are we on the roof with the glitter of Paris below us? Are we watching the snow drape its lace over craggy streets? Or are we in our caverns, where the whispers echo?_

 

_I would be content no matter where we were, so long as you were there with me._

 

_I would give anything for that._

 

_I dream of you. Do you dream of me?_

 

_I hope so…_

 

_I miss you very much, Vlada, and think of you often._

 

_I._

 

_~~_

 

Seras’ cheeks flush at the memory of Integra’s confessions. She had read one and doesn’t need to read more. The Mssr. had been fastidious, and written those in invisible ink; fortunately for Seras, the ink had been the colour of old blood and easy to identify.

 

_That was almost the end of the stack. There had been a long, eerie gap, and then one last letter._

 

 

She had found it banded in black silk. 

 

~~

 

_November 31, 1907_

 

_V —_

 

_There has been an epidemic of influenza. We all caught it._

 

_Walter and I have recovered. Father is dead._

 

_I will be returning to Paris as soon as his estate is settled._

 

_When I do, find me._

 

 _I._  
  
~~

 


	4. Fugue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Growing up, the Maestro and the Mssr. were each kind, in the way lonely people are. 
> 
> Though the letters stopped there, the Mssr. had on rare occasions divulged pieces of her history with the Maestro to me. She had explained the causes of their long detente and while some of it had been circumstance, much more of it had been stubbornness. On both their parts, Integra had admitted once; even here, they were matched in resolve. 
> 
> Knowing the Maestro as I did, I was not at all surprised to hear it. Nevertheless, their reconciliation had been a grim affair.

Seras stares at the page but doesn’t see the ink drying on the paper.

 

Rather, she watches the ghosts of the past in her mind's eye. The pen stills on the page as she trails into memory, remembering the Mssr.’s solemn expression. Even when she was happy, Integra had been reserved. The Maestro, on the other hand, could only be described as dramatic. At all times, no matter the circumstances.

 

His sweeping gestures had shattered more wine glasses than anyone cared to count. Seras thinks he might even have done it on purpose; it had never failed to make the Mssr. hide a smile even as she chided him for his extravagance. 

 

Whatever each saw in the other, they were as complimentary as magnets and a force to be reckoned with.

 

Nevertheless, it hadn’t all been roses for the two of them. The Mssr. had once — and only once — alluded to a period of bitterness between them.

 

Seras had been disconsolate over the latest imbroglio in the chorus ranks. Miss van Winkle, with that razor-blade tongue of hers, had sent around a rumour that Seras had been caught in flagrante delico with the young Marquis de Bernadotte. Pip’s reputation as something of a hound had preceded him, and nobody had been at all surprised. Had she not been one of the named parties, Seras would very well have believed it herself. 

 

That Rip had sent the rumour winging about while Seras was still recovering — hiding, really — after her abrasion had added fuel to the fire; what had been a petty theatre trick had now exploded into a maelstrom of rumour and innuendo. 

 

Seras, beside herself with tears, had fled to the Mssr.’s office and passed a few wretched minutes soaking a borrowed hanky with bitter tears. 

 

Then the Mssr., private and retiring Integra, asked her a single, direct question:

 

_Seras — is his past worth more than your future with him? If you want something… or someone, aren’t they worth fighting for?_

 

Seras, nursing a broken heart and a bruised ego, had nodded with a stiff upper lip. 

 

“Yes? Then I’m very disappointed in you, Seras.”

 

It had been a blow to the gut, knocking the breath clean out of her. 

 

“I really am”, the Mssr. had continued, relentless as a scalpel. “I don’t often misjudge people.” 

 

“Misjudge, Mssr.?” Seras had been confused, but not tentative. The Mssr.’s sharp looks had quickly cured her of her slouch and shyness. 

 

“Yes, disappointed. Precisely! I didn’t think you were the sort to roll over and die, Seras. Especially not because of _her.”_

 

Integra had sneered at the mere mention of Rip, but had spared no mercy for Seras either. “Did you leave your spine in your last costume change? The little lunatic did minor damage; the scratches are healing well enough. She didn’t damage your voice, Seras, she bloodied up your face and reputation.” 

 

The glare the Mssr. had shot her had been guillotine sharp. 

 

“You’ve had worse scuffles on the streets, haven’t you? Buck up! She’ll have to suffer the Count until the premiere. _If_ she even makes it that far.” 

 

“He’s not that bad!”, Seras had felt compelled to insist, though she personally thought that yes, he probably was. 

 

“Your Maestro is an acquired taste, flower girl, don’t be naive. Now: the unlucky Miss van Winkle will be working with the Count to make up for lost practice hours. Take this time and utilize it. 

Rehearse every note and feel every emotion. Study everyone. _Especially_ study her. Note her weaknesses and guard your own. Do not quit, Seras. He wrote this opera for you, for _your_ voice. For Victoria Seras, not Rip van Winkle. _Never_ let them forget that.” 

 

Seras had sucked in a surprised breath. 

 

“For me?! He wrote it for me?!” That someone, let alone the Maestro, would have composed something for her was beyond comprehension. And yet… 

 

“No-one else can sing it. No-one else could dream of hitting those notes! Nobody but you.” Integra had been resolute, with the brutal honesty of the battlefield. "And once you have, no-one will dare presume again, least of all _her_." 

 

Seras had felt her eyes water with emotion.

 

“Mssr…” 

 

“You’re going to out-sing the bitch, Seras. Do I make myself clear? You are going to make her eat every one of those over-enunciated words of hers. I’m banking on it.” 

 

Nobody had ever put so much faith in her before, and Integra had tolerated the subsequent hug with surprisingly good grace. 

 

Seras knows what she wants to write now, and her pen fairly flies.

 

_Growing up, the Maestro and the Mssr. were each kind, in the way lonely people are._

 

_Though the letters stopped there, the Mssr. had on rare occasions divulged pieces of her history with the Maestro to me. She had explained the causes of their long detente and while some of it had been circumstance, much more of it had been stubbornness. On both their parts, Integra had admitted once; even here, they were matched in resolve._

 

_Knowing the Maestro as I did, I was not at all surprised to hear it. Nevertheless, their reconciliation had been a grim affair._

 

 

xx

 1907

 

“Damn you, Vlada!”, Integra mutters, scrubbing at her left eye. It’s watering freely; the dust down here is merciless.

 

Her voice echoes in the stone tunnels and the ventilation shafts carry sound in unpredictable ways. The two of them had spent winter nights exploring the catacombs by lamplight, and Integra knows the tunnels like the back of her hand. 

 

There is no doubt that Vlada can hear her.

 

“Damn you…”, she mutters, without heat. She sounds heartsick, even to herself, but can’t seem to brighten her voice. “I’ve missed you. I kept my promise; Vlada. God help me, I’m home. And yet you are nowhere to be found…” 

 

One of the tunnels near the rehearsal room door echoes with a noise that should not be. 

 

Footsteps. 

 

Integra freezes. 

 

“Vlada?”, she hisses, but gets no answer. 

 

 

xx

 

 

_The Mssr.’s uncle was by all accounts a perfectly respectable younger brother. Unfortunately for him, he was not Sir Arthur Hellsing._

 

_He had never quite made his peace with that._

 

_He had aimed to be the next in line to the title, surpassing the young Miss Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, Sir Arthur’s teenaged daughter. After the influenza epidemic, Sir Hellsing’s effects had been administered and young Integra had been given the title and holdings, making her a wealthy young woman indeed._

 

_Chief amongst these holdings were revenues from the patronage of the Opera Populaire._

 

_In her youth, Integra had accompanied her widowed father on his visits there. Sir Arthur had been active in his patronage, and Integra had grown up listening from the balconies and behind the conductor’s stand, or else curled up in the office talking shop with her father._

 

Seras’s hand stills. She knows the exact sensations the Mssr. had experienced, a world immersed in music and the dusty vanilla of sheet-music. Of candle-light and greasepaint and spectacle. A rarified atmosphere, in cloistered surroundings. No wonder the Mssr. had never felt the need to speak louder than a speaking tone.

 

_The Mssr. was well-educated in the art and science of music, and had acquired a keen head for business. But she was a woman — a young one — and that offended some… first and foremost amongst them her uncle._

 

_Sir Richard Hellsing strongly disapproved of his niece’s new responsibilities and took steps to ensure she would be unlikely to ever assume them._

 

xx

 1907

 

 

“Where are you, Integra? Come along now; there’s no use in fighting this.” 

 

Integra inches through the tunnels as quietly as she can. Every step is taken on slippered feet, and she sticks to the shadowed corners the way Vlada had taught her to. _Cat in the crypts_ , he’d called it. She’d fallen out of practice, but not entirely forgotten how to do it. 

 

She just has to let muscle memory lead her to his suites. She needs to find Vlada. 

 

“You know I’ll catch you sooner or later. I know you can hear me, Integra.” 

 

She needs to find Vlada before Uncle — before _Richard_ finds her. He will kill her as soon as he finds her. She hopes against hope that she lives long enough to see her dear friend again. She doesn’t want to die without seeing Vlada again. 

 

Oh, God. She’s going to die down here.

 

“You understand, Integra. It’s nothing personal. But you’re practically a child, and a _girl_ besides.”

 

She bites her lip until she tastes blood. 

 

She hates the sour-penny taste of it, but it’s better than opening her mouth and letting all her invective out. Integra takes a step into the second catacomb and nearly vomits.

 

The room is _shattered._

 

What should be an empty catacomb, hard rock walls, and echoes, is a muffled, terrifying room of fractals. Each reflects a facet of her, or a shard of darkness, and she is seasick. 

 

Her mind reels when suddenly a shadow appears at the corner of her eye, reflected in one of the mirrors. It’s solid against the reflection; tall, and lean, and wearing an opera cloak. Her eyes focus and nausea recedes. She knows this man; across oceans of time, she recognizes Vlada.

 

Then just as suddenly, he disappears.

 

Integra’s stomach plummets.

 

xx

 

 

_Police records from the era state that, on the evening of Miss Hellsing’s presentation as the new Patron of the Opera Populaire, Sir Richard Hellsing chased her out of her office and pursued her into the lower catacombs of the opera house._

 

Seras knows first-hand how tricky the underground can be, and how easily someone can be lost there. The chorus-girls whisper that the sub-basement connects with the Catacombs, and for all Seras knows, they might be right. 

 

_He stalked her through the passageways and ventilation ducts, helped by two armed thugs. The Mssr., being far more familiar with the catacombs, was nearly able to evade him and would likely have managed it, had she not already been bleeding from a gunshot graze to the upper arm._

 

_Sir Richard followed her into a side-chamber, the record states, and there accosted her._

 

xx


	5. Sempre Piu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her uncle — no, Richard’s — body is already cooling in front of her and in the aftermath of the gunshot, the hallway is dreadfully quiet. This is absolutely not the place for Vlada to be obstinate. And yet… he is nothing if not himself.
> 
>  
> 
> “Nenorocit!”. Vlada snaps, staring at the literal smoking gun. “Good God in Heaven, Integra! That was a nobleman! They will want answers now.”
> 
>  
> 
> The bone-white of his new mask nearly glows in the gloaming of the cavern, the single torch a flickering and moving thing. The stone is hard under her knees, but she can’t find the energy to stand. Her hand shakes until she clenches it into a fist.
> 
>  
> 
> “He’s an attempted murderer!”
> 
>  
> 
> Vlada shrugs. “Our word against his."

Her uncle — no, _Richard’s_ — body is already cooling in front of her, and in the aftermath of the gunshot , the hallway is dreadfully quiet. This is absolutely not the place for Vlada to be obstinate. And yet… he is nothing if not himself. 

 

“ _Nenorocit_!”. Vlada snaps, staring at the literal smoking gun. “Good God in Heaven, Integra! That was a nobleman! They will want answers now.” 

 

The bone-white of his new mask nearly glows in the gloaming of the cavern, the single torch a flickering and moving thing. The stone is hard under her knees, but she can’t find the energy to stand. Her hand shakes until she clenches it into a fist.

 

“He’s an attempted murderer!” 

 

Vlada shrugs. “Our word against his. And I’m a wonderful character witness, ask anyone! Are you _trying_ to get us killed?!” 

 

She is so happy to hear his voice again, even if she wants to strangle him a bit. She had forgotten the rolling accent, warm like summer fog, and she’s never heard his voice so low.

 

_He_ would _be a basso profundo,_ she thinks wryly. Integra herself had never evolved into much more than a passable singer and adequate cellist, but Vlada… ah, her Vlada had taken to the opera like a songbird. He’d sounded like an angel, singing the Christmas hymns so high and cold and pure that she’d wiped away stray tears. 

 

_I used to call him my angel of music, and now he can barely meet my eyes. Oh, Vlada, how-ever will we solve this?_

 

She kneels on the bedrock with blood drying in her skirts and feels the first flutterings of panic in her hands. Vlada sits across from her, so the panic is tempered with relief. For the first time in years, she feels like herself.

 

Now to act like it.

 

_Riposte, Integra! You don’t back down._

 

“Don’t be glib", she snaps. "It was just a suggestion! Could we say it was the Phantom of the Opera?

 

“You ignore the obvious, Miss Hellsing! The _fantôme_ of the Opera, of _your_ opera, a murderer! Of the _living_?! Ghosts don’t kill, Integra! If we do this, there will be nowhere left for me to hide! The superstitious idiots will burn this place to the ground and salt the ashes.” 

 

“Vlada. I think you’re being a little over-emphatic.” She knows it’s the wrong thing to say as soon as it leaves her mouth. He’s never appreciated having his feelings dismissed. She had forgotten, until now. 

 

_How much else have you forgotten?_ The thought is chilling. She expects an explosion, but instead, he pins her with an unyielding gaze. Her pulse flutters. 

 

“I’m only flesh and bone, Integra; you know that better than anyone.” 

 

She does, but only theoretically. She’s never had the opportunity to test her hypothesis, despite years of consideration, and if she doesn’t think of something quickly, she never will. Someone will come searching for Richard, and she can't very well deny the murder. If she doesn't play her cards right, Vlada will end up behind bars again. The entirety of her being rebels at the thought. 

 

Integra refuses to allow that to happen ever again. And so, there is nothing to do but solve this problem, and there's no one to do it but her. 

 

_Think, Integra, think! Your uncle -- the_ assassin _\-- the nobleman. Your friend, the deformed rescuer. And you, the orphaned heiress, friendless and_ just a girl _besides. That’s what you’ve got to work with, so you’d better come up with something clever quickly._

 

“Be reasonable!”, he continues, and she gives her head a little shake for good measure. “What will that do for the reputation of the theatre? At best a ghost lurking about, at worst a murder in the catacombs?” 

 

“Enhance it, I should expect! Everyone likes a good murder mystery.” She isn’t quite sure of that, but damned if she’ll let her nerves show. 

 

“In any case, Vlada, it isn’t as though we have much of an option.” She jerks her chin at the bloody mess of his arm. It’s bleeding, turning the black silk glossy as a crow feather, and his already pale skin a ghastly shade of grey. 

 

“I can fix that.” 

 

She stares at him with bald incredulity. What little blood he has left in him flushes to his cheeks. 

 

“You can _not_ ”, she snaps, and reluctantly, he shakes his head. 

 

Somehow, she’d known he was lying, but she’ll worry about that later. For now, they have more pressing matters. “You can’t stitch that yourself, Vlada, and you will bleed to death before we could even begin to get the bullet out. And then where would I be?” 

 

That bullet had been intended for her forehead, after all. 

 

Instead, Vlada’s arm had flown out, and the slug had burrowed into the meat and bone of his upper arm. Integra is alive, and his left arm is dead at his side. 

 

_Oh, God, his music…_

 

The violin requires both hands. If she's robbed him of that... 

 

_This is your responsibility now, Integra._

 

“ _Don’t be glib_ ”, Vlad mocks her, and she glares at him. He grins, all teeth and wholly unrepentant. “He might have been a murderer, but trust me, Integra — they will want to account for Lord Hellsing.” 

 

The mere sound of that puts her in a fury. 

 

“ _Lord_ Hellsing? _Hardly_. One can pick ones’ friends, Vlada, but you can’t choose your family. In any case, he tried to assassinate me! I’ll tell them that. It’s the truth.” 

 

“ _Family_?!” 

 

“He was my uncle”, she snaps, and he suddenly looks very taken aback. It's as though she’s smacked his nose with a newspaper. “Who did you think he was?!”

 

He glares at her. “Never mind that now", he says with an aborted wave of his hand, and a resulting sharp grimace. She'll have to find out later. 

 

"And the two dead thugs? What of them? Are they also to be victims of Monsieur _le Fantôme_?” He sounds incredulous, and she frowns, brows beetling as she mulls it over. It does rather beggar belief -- though she can't very well say that the truth is any more believable. 

 

“I’m working on it! Give me a moment!” Peevishly, she roots about in her pocket for a cigarillo. Unearthing one, she thrusts it at him. “I don’t see you being helpful, so you might as well be useful instead.” 

 

Vlada leans in and lights her cigar with his good hand. His eyes reflect the flame like spinels in the sun, and the blood-loss has made his skin is nearly translucent, but his hair is slicked back and his mask adds an air of rakish mystery. He bows, only the slightest amount, but the effect is one of casual, innate gentility. She wonders how many times he's practised this, and what he hoped for as he did.

 

Still, she has to admit that the effect is... compelling. 

 

_He looks like the hero of one of Clementine’s breathless romances,_ she thinks, pulse racing with adrenaline. _A gentleman, the sort that’s mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but a gentleman all the same._

 

Suddenly, Integra is struck by the gloriously obvious.

 

“ _Oh._ ” 

 

“Oh?” Vlada sounds suspicious. That’s probably wise of him, but the more Integra mulls over the idea, the better it sounds. 

 

“Oh! Vlada, we can tell the _truth_!” 

 

He gawps at her, torchlight casting shadows in bas-relief over his mask. “ _Oh_ , and how well that will undoubtedly go! They will have me hanged for homicide, Integra! I know you believe I have sinned against you... but is an execution truly necessary?” 

 

“Listen, Vlada — I made sure you were provided for, didn’t I? Through the Opera revenues.” 

 

He bristles like a soaked cat. “Again with this vulgar talk of an allowance. I didn’t ask to be kept, Integra.” His lip curls with disdain and Integra rolls her eyes at him.

 

“ _Vulgar_ , my goodness. Spoken like a true aristocrat! Which is my _point_ , Vlada, if you’d only stop and _think_! You’ve been listening at the vents, haven’t you?” 

 

It might have been years, but it seems she can still read him like a book. That ducked head, those hunched shoulders… He looks like he’s been caught stealing a sweet.

 

You have! Vlad — did you spend any of it? The returns from the theatre?” 

 

“Of course not! I wouldn’t accept your charity.” He sounds terribly offended and draws himself up to his full height. 

 

She fights the urge to box his ears.

 

“It wasn’t — damn you, we’re running out of time. Listen, I say! We tell the truth! Richard was furious at being denied what he saw as his rightful inheritance and attempted to murder me. I defended myself, but he had a pistol and I did not. You heard a lady’s scream and came to assist me, as any gentleman would. You dispatched the villains, becoming grievously wounded in the process, and as my uncle and I struggled for the pistol it went off and shot him.”

 

It sounds reasonable in her head. Integra wonders if she's gone entirely mad. 

 

“And who am I, then, that heard you and rushed to your rescue like Galahad? How very convenient, by the way.” His nose is so far into the air that she’s surprised he hasn’t scraped it on the ceiling. She ought not to find it so endearing.

 

“Perhaps a foreign nobleman? It is the premiere… ” 

 

“Oh, of course. A Count from a far country, one no-one’s ever heard of. Transylvania, perhaps?” He sounds deeply incredulous.

 

“Actually, Vlada, that’s not bad… I’ve never been there, and I’m more well-travelled than most. You could pass for a man of taste and distinction.”

 

“What do you mean, _pass_?” He sounds insulted when she has the temerity to grin at him.

 

“Never mind that now!”, she says with a wave of her hand, trailing smoke like incense and only mocking him a little. “I think it might work.”

 

“Integra", he starts, and his voice is considering. "Why the gamble? You can’t mean to do this out of the goodness of your heart.” 

 

_Guilty as charged, Integra. It would seem that knife cuts both ways_. It’s only sod’s luck that he knows her so well, but she might as well come clean now. 

 

“It’s only… Well, it’s only that would be convenient. We could say you were some Transylvanian aristocrat, and I would, of course, become friends with a gentleman who saved my life. There would be nothing inappropriate about it.”

 

Integra dances on the razor’s edge for a moment. _Be glorious_ , she thinks, and leaps.

 

“And in time, you might be able to escort me places. Openly, on occasion. If you liked.” She fights the urge to lower her gaze; instead, she holds his. 

 

Integra can barely believe her own audacity. 

 

“Escort you? Court you, you mean.” He doesn’t sound as outraged as she had expected. She supposes that’s rather a net positive, unless the blood-loss has put him into shock. That is also a distinct possibility. 

 

_Best be frank and brief_ , she thinks, and ploughs ahead before she can second-guess herself into paralysis she can ill afford.

 

“I meant what I wrote, Vlada. I’m not ashamed of you. If this is our chance, I’ll take it!” The words spill out in a torrent. She briefly wonders if planning all this over Richard’s body makes her wicked, and roundly decides she doesn’t give a fig. 

 

She is _not_ grieving the man who tried and failed to murder her. 

 

“What you _wrote_ …”, he pauses, oddly pensive, and then seems to rally. “And what makes you think that I want this to be our chance? Why should I lie to the world for you, Integra?” 

 

For a moment, she thinks she ought to be offended. But this is Vlada, reclusive at best, isolated at worst; a poor conversationalist with only a passing acquaintance with manners. Why shouldn’t he be absolutely himself? 

 

_Think about what he means, Integra, instead of the way he says it._

 

 

_xx_

 

 

_The Maestro appeared to have entered the Mssr.’s life at something of a tumultuous time._

 

_Newly orphaned, and friendless in the world, Miss Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing had been achingly vulnerable. Her butler, though loyal, was only one man and growing old besides. Her late father’s friends and acquaintances were reliable enough, but when she had been pursued into the catacombs by her perfidious uncle, she was indeed quite alone._

 

_It was only the intervention of the Maestro which saved her, a fact which the gossip rags found endlessly, breathtakingly, compelling._

 

_The more sordid rumours detailed a room full of mirrors, their purpose altogether quite unknown and, therefore, entirely sinister. The lurid insinuations had, of course, been whispered about in all the best drawing rooms of the Continent._

 

_In all the tales, the ending was the same:_

 

_The gallant chevalier, hearing a lady’s scream, followed the maiden’s trail until he found her in the monster’s lair. He had slain the beast and rescued the maiden, and she had rewarded him with her favour._

 

_The man himself responded with… characteristic savoir-faire. The lady had, naturally, demurred._

 

Seras smiled at the memory of the Maestro, swooping about and delighting in his dramatics. His voice, his face, his gestures and eyes — all so expressive. The Maestro had been elegant in word and deed, with an air of danger that clung to him like expensive cologne. A handsome man who had made a habit of wearing an ivory half-mask in public, the Maestro drew eyes wherever he went.

 

He also had the uncanny knack of conducting any room like an orchestra, a trait he indulged in often.

 

At his side through every memory, the Mssr. towered like an obelisk. She had been singular in her own right, and the two of them had made a striking pair.

 

If Integra had worn a colour other than black, Seras hadn’t seen it. The waistcoat and trousers had been something of a surprise at first, but the ensemble had suited her. Icily aristocratic, she had been a sight to behold. To hear the Maestro tell it, he’d lived for her from the first time she opened her mouth and an order fell out. 

 

_Despite — or because of — their differences in temperament, the two quickly became inseparable. Indeed, the earliest days of the Opera Populaire’s new management were a matter of some renown. Within the year, the bright young Mssr. and her mysterious companion became the talk of the town._

 

_The fact that both parties were known to be especially retiring only added to their considerable mystique._

 

xx

 

“Because it’s not for _me_ , Vlada. You might not like being seen but you do want people to know you — nobody writes music the way you do if they don’t. And you’re here, aren’t you?” 

 

She sweeps a hand around, leaving a trail of smoke like incense in her wake. 

 

“You’re resourceful, Vlada. You have been from the moment I met you. You could go anywhere and do very nearly anything. You’re marvellously adaptable and I’ve never known you to fail to seize an opportunity. You stay here because it offers you something anywhere else can’t.”

 

He shows his teeth in a feral smile, predatory in the torchlight. She refuses to be unnerved. 

 

“Appealing to my ego?”, he croons. “That’s too obvious, Integra.” 

 

“Of course it is. But it’s working.” 

 

And it is, she can tell. He seems more alive now that he’s been given something to sink his claws into. Integra’s no fool. Vlada’s had a flair for the dramatic from the day she met him, and a taste for the finer things, too. 

 

_It will work. It has to._

 

“So what you mean to suggest is that we should tell the truth, except for the parts where we lie audaciously about who I am, where I’m from and what I’ve done.” 

 

“Essentially.”

 

“You have some nerve.” 

 

“Yes”, she agrees, and he chuckles. It echoes awfully in the room, and she carries on relentlessly. “But I’m not wrong. You do want your music heard! I know you do… no amount of time could have tarnished that. I remember, Vlada; the songs you would make for us, and I’d hum them all the time. They kept me company when I was so very lonely.” 

 

She looks away, looks down. The blood on her skirts, and on her hands, is tacky as it dries, and she lifts her gaze away from the carnage. Integra meets his eyes, even as her voice lowers to a confessional whisper. Here, in the stone halls of the dead, she feels as though she's passed through some veil of courage. 

 

“You want your music to be heard. I want the world to hear your music. It isn’t charity, Vlada. It’s _pride_. In your work…and in you.”

 

For a single moment, there is only silence. The look on his face defies words, but she sees the sheen of tears in his eyes. He swallows, hard, and looks away. When he finally speaks, his voice is husky.

 

“As you say. And what of the mask, then? How have you rationalized away that little nightmare? Undoubtedly you have.” 

 

She nods. Indeed, she has. 

 

“If you insist on hiding it… you were grievously injured in a war, and wear a mask for the scar. That explains your martial skills and your courage. Your gallantry, even!” 

 

“Don’t push it”, he mutters, and she huffs but concedes the point. 

 

“Fine. You’re a retiring man, who enjoys the opera but reserves a box and does not mingle. An angel investor, if you will.” 

 

As she’d hoped, that makes him snort with amusement. “What haven’t you thought of, Integra?” 

 

She pauses. He’s always had a way of cutting clear to the quick; that attention to detail has made him a precise engineer and composer, but she feels dissected. Nevertheless, she cannot ask that which she isn’t prepared to offer in kind. The distance between them has narrowed, and she must only reach out to bridge the gap. She trusts him. She has from the moment she saw him behind those bars. 

 

“That you might decline. I have been too afraid to consider it.”

 

He doesn’t answer for a long time. He watches her, though, as though committing her to memory, or relearning a favourite lullaby. 

 

“Would you hate me very much if I did, Integra?” 

 

His voice is quiet, almost inaudible. She takes a breath, and his hand. 

 

It’s the first time she’s touched him since everything was perfect, and for the first time in a long while, Integra feels at peace. It makes what comes next effortless and terrifying, like missing a step on the stairs. Her stomach flips, her pulse flutters. She answers the only way she knows how.

 

“ _Hate_ you? You’d break my heart, Vlada, but I wouldn’t hate you. How could I, when I’ve only ever loved you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sempre - Musical notation for "Always".  
> Piu - Musical notation for "More". 
> 
> Nenorocit - A very bad word. Vlada, wherever did you come by that potty-mouth?


	6. Masquerade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He chased her, Messieurs! In the dark!” 
> 
> He might be trowelling it on a little thickly, but the detective eats it up with a spoon. 
> 
> “My goodness, how terrible!”, he exclaims, and Integra struggles to keep a poker face. She’s torn between terror and laughter. Mad laughter, perhaps, because she really shouldn’t be having this much fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a change to the format here, simply because the chapter was already quite long. You'll also notice that this is the first chapter that isn't told in an epistolary format; that's also due to length. Expect to see Seras again shortly!

"He _chased_ her, Messieurs! In the dark!” 

 

He might be trowelling it on a little thickly, but the detective eats it up with a spoon. 

 

“My goodness, how terrible!”, he exclaims, and Integra struggles to keep a poker face. She’s torn between terror and laughter. Mad laughter, perhaps, because she really shouldn’t be having this much fun. 

 

Despite the sword of Damocles hanging over both their necks, Vlada seems to be enjoying himself, too. Or at least, she thinks so. She’s on his left side, so all she sees is that damned mask.

 

“He was… persistent”, she murmurs, and to his credit, the good detective does make note of it. 

 

“And how are you acquainted with the mademoiselle, Monsieur…?” He is capable, and polite, and his tone is respectful, but Integra’s stomach clenches like a fist. The moment of truth. She bites her cheek until she tastes pennies.

 

“Ah, of course. I am Comte Vladislav III Dracul. And I do not have the pleasure, Mademoiselle. Our introductions were, ah…” 

 

He trails off, unwilling to mention unpleasantries. It’s such a natural gesture that she is instantly suspicious. _A gentleman to the core, despite never having met one in his life._

 

Integra is astounded… no, _dumbfounded_. 

 

_What have you been doing whilst I was away, Vlada? What’s been going on in that brilliant brain of yours?_

 

“Perfunctory”, she finishes for him, it’ll be suspicious if she stays quiet much longer. “My name is…”, — she makes an irrevocable decision, like stepping off of a cliff, and continues —, “ _Sir_ Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing.” 

 

She notices the detective’s eyebrow raise; he scribbles something else down in his little notebook. Vlada doesn’t even twitch. 

 

“ _Sir_?” Vlada’s voice is as delicate as an embroidery needle, and as precise. This isn’t part of the act. He’s genuinely curious. 

 

Integra shrugs her shoulders casually.

 

_I will be no-one’s little wife, Vlada. Not ever_. 

 

She remembers promising herself that, even committing it to paper, and although she regrets the circumstances she’s not unhappy that she’s her own master now. “It was a hereditary Knighthood.” 

 

He nods, accepting the answer instantly. 

 

“Having seen you on the field of battle, I can say it suits you. I am charmed to make your acquaintance, Sir Hellsing.” Vlada — no, the _Count_ — takes her proffered hand, and presses his lips to the back of it.

 

Her gloves, of course, had been far too bloody to wash out. 

 

He smiles over the back of her knuckles, a brief and skittering thing. He’s shockingly pale against her skin.

 

“Enchantée, Monsieur le Comte”, Integra says, fighting to keep the quirk of her lips from showing. She’s supposed to be bereft by her uncle’s treachery, not playing pretend with Vlada.

 

“So you don’t know each other?” The question is said mildly, but Integra knows a trap when she sees one. She turns to the detective and folds her hands together firmly to keep them from quaking. 

 

“Not at all, and yet I find myself grateful for the kindness of strangers. Detective, this gentleman took a bullet intended for me. I know I would be dead were it not for him.” She doesn’t intend it to be a reproof, but it comes out sharper than intended.

 

The detective spreads his hands placatingly.

 

“Of course, ah… Monsieur. These are all procedural questions, you understand. Do you know anything about the Opera’s affairs, perchance? How did you find your way around the catacombs?” 

 

She allows herself to feel the sorrow of a changed life slipping away, of sweet chutney and sheet-music and cigar-smoke, and then replies with the truth. 

 

“My father frequently brought me along on his business visits. The Opera has access to the deeper catacombs, although I wasn’t allowed down that far. Naturally, I explored them any chance I could. The upper levels are used as store-rooms and costume warehouses, and those were well-trafficked, too. As you can imagine, I spent a great deal of time daydreaming there as a young girl and knew my way around. I suppose you never do forget…” 

 

“How did your uncle —“, and the look Integra shoots the detective could curdle vinegar. He stammers out a hasty apology. “Pardon me, Miss… rather, _Sir_! How did the deceased follow you?” 

 

Integra relents, but she can all but feel Vlada’s amusement radiating from beside her. “He’d shot me; here, on my arm. It bled rather a lot, and I expect I left a fairly obvious trail.” 

 

Vlada, of course, takes the opportunity to have a little fun. She’d roll her eyes, but she isn’t supposed to know him. Nevertheless, the temptation is excruciating.

 

“She looked awful, Detective, just ghastly; pale as a phantom!” He rambles on, gloved hands gesticulating. “It nearly gave me white hair to see her!” 

 

Vlada plays the aristocrat well, she thinks, and for a moment sees the man he might have been had he not been stuck with his awful luck. He would have made a name for himself, she thinks. 

 

If this works, he still might. Provided he doesn’t talk them out of it. 

 

And even as risible as it ought to sound coming from him… it also rings with truth, and with concern. He isn’t faking this, even if he is chewing the scenery a bit. 

 

“I didn’t know I had disturbed you so!” 

 

Vlada waves her words leisurely away.

 

“Beauty should always stir the pulse, bloody or no.” Integra wonders if perhaps that isn’t too on the nose. But the detective seems to chalk it up to the general flamboyance of him, and she doesn't correct the misconception. 

 

She does, however, indulge herself a little. 

 

“Goodness, what a line! Now I _know_ you’re not English.”

 

“Where _did_ you say you were from again?” The detective has been silent until now, and that makes Integra nervous. She knows the easiest way to get answers is to say nothing, and this man’s very good at it. She realizes suddenly that they hadn’t truly decided on anywhere, and kicks herself for having brought it up. 

 

“Wallachia, a principality of Romania.” 

 

Integra breathes again. She likes the way he says that, and wonders how much of it is the truth. _How old was he when they put him in that cage?_ She’s afraid to ask. She’s already murdered one man in cold blood, and whoever put him behind those horrid bars wouldn’t be missed. She drags her thoughts away before the intent to commit an overdue homicide telegraphs on her features. 

 

“And what do your people do, Mssr. le Comte?” The detective is making his little notes, wholly unruffled. Integra had taken care to be brutally honest with him in her own interview and set the record straight. 

 

The Count had, independently, corroborated her account. 

 

But she still doesn’t trust strangers, and resents anything that stands to take Vlada from her. She’ll be glad when this is over. 

 

Vlada, it would seem, might disagree. He’s back to chewing the scenery, even as Integra’s stomach gnaws itself with nerves.

 

“This and that. As for myself, I appreciate music, and enjoy searching out new talent.”

 

“So you don’t have a job?” The detective sounds vaguely disapproving, and now Vlada’s nose inches incrementally upwards. The mask catches the candlelight and warms to the colour of polished bone. 

 

“I am a gentleman.” He injects precisely the right amount of affront into the words, and the delivery has a hint of vague disdain. It is the most patrician thing Integra’s ever heard. She blinks in surprise; he’s good at this. 

 

_Very_ good at this. 

 

_Vlada, what_ have _you been up to?_

 

“Right, right, of course. And what brings you to London, Mssr. le Comte?” 

 

“The Opera Populaire, as it happens.” Integra’s breath catches in her throat. That is a risk, and she hopes he knows what he’s doing. 

 

_And what are you doing now?_

 

“It is a small theatre, you understand, but it has gained a reputation for ambition, and execution.”   
  
“Goodness!” The detective flinches at the choice of words.  
  
“Forgive me, is this wrong?”, he says, and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “It is only… It is one thing to plan something groundbreaking. It is another thing entirely to execute those plans and see the gamble pay off.

 

“Mssr. Hellsing’s reputation precedes her; ever since the passing of the late Sir Hellsing, the executive decisions have come from her desk. They have been unerringly successful. I wanted to see what Mssr. Hellsing might premiere this season.” 

 

Integra is surprised he’d known. She’d been handling the correspondence and management after Father’s passing and hadn’t thought anyone would notice. Certainly, Richard never had. 

 

Nevertheless, she must hold the line.

 

“Count… you’re _far_ too flattering.” She’s serious. He can’t overdo this or they’ll be caught out.

 

“What an accusation! It isn’t flattery if it’s true, Mssr., and I assure you — I am an honest man.” 

 

“So you came from… Wallachia, was it? To watch the opera?” The detective’s voice has a tinge of incredulity. Integra’s stomach clenches like a bear-trap.

 

“And to make the acquaintance of Mssr. Hellsing, in point of fact!” 

 

_Vlad, no._

 

“Me? More flattery, Mssr. le Comte.” Her spine is very straight, and her eyes are very direct. That seems to be what catches his attention, and she can see awareness creep into his gaze. 

 

“Only the honest truth. I was very impressed by the production of _Thaïs_ last season. Am I correct in assuming that was your doing?” 

 

Back to neutral ground. Better. Safer. 

 

“Yes.” She turns to the detective,and keeps going. “Richard never showed much interest in the theatre.” An understatement, as Richard had made it clear that the extent of his investment in the Opera extended to the chorus-girls and no further. He had been quite content to spend its revenues and romance its silly ballerinas, but the greater responsibilities disinterested him. 

 

“I handled the managerial decisions”, she continues, and Vlada cuts in smoothly as a waltz.

 

“I expected so. The Continent was amused by his pretensions. _Madama Butterfly_ simply failed to impress. There was no… no pulse in it.” He says it with an entirely straight face.

 

Integra fights the urge to laugh; that’d surely merit a note in that little dossier. 

 

Vlada continues on, nonplussed. “But _Thaïs_ was different. _Thaïs_ was _new_. The orchestration, the dance, the costumes… I knew it couldn’t possibly be his. And of course, here you are.”

 

“Here I am.” 

 

“And there you _both_ were, with a dead body in the sub-basement! 

 

“Yes, indeed…”, the Count says, icily aristocratic. “And the world is better for it!” 

 

Integra gasps, but Vlad continues brutally onwards, deadly as a cavalry charge. 

 

“What sort of man tries to murder a lady, monsieur? Their own family! Let him plead his case with God, but I shed no tears for the coward!” 

 

The detective seems to take the outburst in stride, but Integra forces herself to look sombre. That man was the last blood kin she had in this world. 

 

_Good riddance to bad rubbish, then._ But she still must see to this last, final act. 

 

“As a matter of fact, I should attend to the burial, gentlemen. He is still family. If you have no objections, Detective?”   
  
It’s as she promised Vlada. Honesty, insofar as possible.

 

Her hands shake, so she clasps them together. But then the detective notes the paper and nods, rising to shake her hand firmly.

 

“Of course. And if I have further questions—“ 

 

“You are certainly welcome to ask them. Good evening, Detective. Monsieur le Comte.” She’s careful not to linger on the title. 

 

His smile widens, cat-in-cream smug. He unfolds himself from his seat, and Integra is stricken by the figure he cuts. Vlada looks fit. From the look on his face, he knows it. 

 

_Smug creature_.

 

He hands her his card in a white-gloved hand, still stained red around the fingertips. 

 

“Monsieur Integra…” 

 

He bows over her bare hand, pressing his lips again to the flesh, and the smile he flashes up at her as he rises has far too many teeth. She doesn’t quite suppress the blush; he notices, and his grin widens even further. 

 

“As your Englishman said, _When sorrows come, they come not single spies._ _But in battalions!_ I trust that by our next meeting, you will have crushed those battalions underfoot. I look forward to the next season, Monsieur.”

 

She’s reluctantly impressed at his savoir faire. That’s what she’s blaming her thunderous pulse on, at least. Certainly not the way his canine tooth catches his lip and looks, for the briefest moment, like a fang. Definitely not the way he watches her with rapt attention. 

 

And it certainly has nothing to do with the way her hand tingles from the buss of his lips. 

 

“Thank you, Monsieur le Comte. For everything. Gentlemen, please do excuse me.” 

 

Integra makes it a few doorways down the hallway before sagging against the wall, heart thudding in her ears. She doesn’t mean to overhear, but it’s late and corridors echo. So she hears Vlada — _no_ , she thinks, _it's the Count now_ —clear as a bell. 

 

“Do you see, now? There goes history in the making, monsieur. Is she not magnificent?” 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few end notes here: 
> 
> Vlad is masquerading as, well, himself. Which is to say, the Count Dracula. Wallachia, at this point in history, was a principality of the Kingdom of Romania and as such, tucked between the Ottoman, Russian and Austrio-Hungarian empires. Integra and Vlad are hoping that the detective hasn't been to any of those.  
> They are also hoping that, as the detective probably hasn't met many Romanians, or Wallachians, or noblemen of either location, he's inclined to take Vlad at his swishy, cape-twirling word. He is Dracula, so he's chewing on everything but especially the scenery. 
> 
> As an addendum: Madame Butterfly and Thaïs are both contemporaneous to the time period featured in the fic. Madame Butterfly was hated for precisely the reasons Vlad mentions. Thaïs, likewise, was lauded. That's all true. 
> 
> "Your Englishman", of course, refers to Shakespeare. The quote is Hamlet.


	7. Accarezzevole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rip van Winkle was known throughout Europe as the best coloratura of her age. Strikingly pretty and a miracle on the stage, the rumour was that she was also more than a little mad. But her voice — and the backing of her wealthy patron — was enough to ensure she kept singing. 
> 
> And sing she did, with a voice as agile as it was high. 
> 
> Miss van Winkle was, by anyone’s estimation, a coup for any opera house to secure. She was also — and may God forbid me for speaking ill of the dead — a heinous bitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accarezzevole - an indication that the piece is to be played evocatively or in a caressing manner.

“Integra!” 

  
  
He fights the urge to slap away her hands. It would be childish, and she’d blister him with a glare for it. Still, he must protest.

 

“I don’t think this is a good idea”, he mutters, and true to form, her blue eyes glint like honed steel in the firelight. 

 

“You’ve said. Really, Vlada, did you have to come all the way down to the catacombs? You know we’re running late. And did you know these new dancing slippers barely have soles? Because I do!” 

 

His grimace speaks volumes. “Allow me to reiterate, Integra. I _emphatically_ do not believe this is a good idea.” The emphasis is delicate as an anvil. 

 

She shakes her head at him. They agreed on this; she won’t let him fail, not now when her reputation — and his music — are on the line. 

 

“You’re unmarried, of an age, and a major patron of the theatre. It’s all above board.”

 

“It’s the foreigner, with the Monsieur. It’s salacious. You’ll cause a scandal. _We_ will cause a scandal! What if they dig, Integra?!” 

 

“Oh? And so what if they do? Having an affair isn’t illegal, Vlada, it’s just good gossip. Pray don’t forget that there’s no-one I owe an accounting of my personal affairs to. What are they going to do, tattle to my butler?! In any case, a scandal must be whispered about, which means their ears will be perked to catch your music. And if they come to gawk at the unnatural woman that I am, they must pay for a seat in my theatre. I expect my revenues will outweigh any tarnish to my reputation, such as it is. So be it, Vlada.” Even as she says it, she realizes she means it. 

 

There’s something liberating about having nothing to lose but her mind.

 

“…You raise a valid point”, he concedes, and she startles. She hadn’t said that aloud, had she? “Nevertheless — not to be selfish, but what of the focus on me?” 

 

“It’s going to sound callous, but isn’t that rather the point of an audience? Vlada, this is our dream: my theatre, and your music. We even have our diva; what a coup! You have everything you’ve ever wanted!” 

 

He shakes his head, softly. The torch-light gives a warm yellow tint to his mask; it looks like fresh bone. 

 

“I’ve only ever wanted you”, he confesses. 

 

Her breath wheezes out in a rush, and at his throat, her ungloved hands quake.

 

“Oh, Vlada. Listen to your silver tongue flap”, Integra replies, even as she shivers at the invitation in his tone. “I am serious, though. Your music is sublime. You have a gift, and I have the means to help you share it. We just have to do _this_. A few silly parties a year to pad the financiers’ egos and let them try to impress the Opera Populaire’s new composer in residence.” 

 

“Whom they shall all assume is your lover.” 

 

He clearly intends for that to dissuade her. He has seriously miscalculated.

 

“Were that I was so fortunate!”, she mutters instead. 

 

“Integra!” He does sound genuinely scandalized, and only the fabric she’s got wrapped around his collar keeps him from rearing backwards. 

 

“Vlada. I’m a virgin, not a nun.” She does not roll her eyes, though she would very much like to. She does tug on the cravat, instead. 

 

“You will be the death of me”, Vlada mutters. “Integra — you want to show me around Society. Haven’t you seen what happens when that happens? They’ll think me a freak, and worse of you. _Especially_ if it’s true!” 

 

She couldn’t give a damn what they think, but Vlada does and she knows why. She hopes to God she’s right and her gamble pays off, because she’d rather drop the new chandelier on the lot of them than see Vlada mocked again.

 

“Once they hear your music, they’ll understand. They’ll see a genius, and I promise you: the mask adds mystique.” She’s not unaware of the figure he cuts, even if he is. He’s no longer the cringing boy in the cage, and he has a way of drawing appreciative eyes.  


 

“ _Mystique_. You have a funny way of phrasing it.” 

  
  
“I’m known for my humour, ask anyone. Come on, Vlada, we’re running late. Let me at that!” She stares at the mess of crumpled fabric with dismay. “Honestly! I’ve seen you tie a bow-tie in the dark. Did you do this one-handed?”

  
  
He leers at her. When Integra realizes why, her cheeks prickle with a damnable blush. She rushes through the rest of the knot, and while it isn’t her best work, she blames her nerves and not his proximity.

 

“All done, lazy-bones”, she mutters, and flicks his neck sharply in rebuke. He grins down at her, wholly unrepentant.  


 

“Yours are always nicer”, he teases, and takes a step in towards her. “And in any case… maybe I wanted you within striking distance.” 

 

His arms wrap around her, reeling her in closer, and she goes willingly. His lips just barely brush her cheek; the mask is cool as always. He smells of citron noir, and something earthier; old stone after a rainstorm, perhaps. She’s always liked the scent of petrichor and tries to steal another breath or two of him for good measure. 

 

“Good luck with that,”, she murmurs, and this close her voice is throaty and whisper-low. “Are you trying to distract me?” 

 

He grins unrepentantly. “Is it working?” 

 

Damn him, she is _not_ charmed. 

 

“Integra… if this goes poorly…” The seriousness in his tone catches her attention, and she leaps to cut him off at the head. 

 

“— Which it won’t!” 

  
  
“But in the event that it does… promise me that you will not abandon me. Please. I could not bear it again.”

 

Integra’s hand raises instinctively to cup the chill of the porcelain mask, and wishes she was cupping skin instead. She is well aware of life’s bitterness, but it still breaks her heart to see her genius laid so low. 

 

“I promise.” Her voice softens. “Vlada, you must know that to be true beyond a doubt, if for no other reason than the fact that I am here. I am a woman of means, answerable to no-one but my Country, Crown and God. I could be anywhere in the world with…” 

 

She thinks of tired blue eyes and a low laugh, of cigars and whiskey and a steady voice reading her fairy-tales. 

 

“W-with almost anyone I wanted, and I am here, tying your damned cravat, which I know you buggered up on the chance you might steal a kiss. Hear me, Vlada: there is nowhere I would rather be, and nothing else I would rather be doing. Nothing in the world could ever compel me to abandon you. Nothing at all. I promised you I would come home, and I’m here.” 

 

She says it with aching conviction, pouring every wish on every falling star, every blown-out birthday candle, every eyelash and apple-stem and girlish promise, into the words. 

 

“We’re so close. It’s just this one last thing.” 

 

He nods, and she exhales slowly. Her voice softens. 

 

“Vlada. It’s time.” 

 

“All right. Let’s go… face the music.” 

 

She stares at him for a moment, until she can’t help it and her composure crumbles. Integra snorts out a giggle and his laugh, though soft, is achingly fond. _Bastard_ , she thinks with deep affection. 

 

“Sweet Christ”, she groans instead, because she has appearances to maintain, and he starts to laugh in earnest. 

 

 

—

 

 

Walter has done excellent work and spared no expense, as per the Count’s precise instructions. 

 

The grand steps are lavished with cloth of gold and enough hot-house roses to perfume the air with the height of mid-summer. Tallow candles and electric lights compete to cast refractions along the white marble, and black-clad waiters circulate with champagne and sweets.

 

Integra and her Count both wear red to match, but where Vlada accents his outfit with black, she gilds hers with gold. Where he wears a polished ivory mask, the clips holding up her hair are made of gilded bone. 

 

She is conscious of every penny spent in the pursuit of perfection, and even she has to admit that Vlada knows what he’s doing. In his guise as Count, he is possessed of exquisite — and expensive — taste. 

 

And all of it for a single, simple, reason. 

 

Vlada, ever the consummate showman, taps a ruby signet ring against his glass, and the sound echoes like a bell. _What excellent acoustics_ , she thinks. _It’s only fitting._

 

“Mesdames et Messieurs, your host — Monsieur Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing.”

 

With a sweeping bow, he cedes the spotlight to her. 

 

She ascends the steps, silk-gloved hands steady. This is her home, her opera house, and her territory. There’s nothing that can frighten her here. At the side of the dais, her ever-present shadow, Vlada nods his support.   
  
She doesn’t need it, but it’s nice to have nevertheless.

 

“Ladies. Gentlemen. Thank you for joining us this evening. It is our privilege to host such a rarified company. ” 

 

There is a titter amongst the regulars in the room, and Integra locks eyes with Vlada for a single moment. He is unwavering, never so much as blinking. He looks as though he’s seeing a ghost, or else some sort of miracle. 

 

No-one else has ever looked at her like that, and if she has it her way no one else ever will. So she does what she must to ensure no one else ever can. 

 

“Before we begin this evening’s entertainments, a few brief manager’s notes on the Opera’s new production of _Lucia di Lammermoor_.” Without looking at him, she knows Vlada is stifling a snort. 

 

“We are pleased to introduce our new conductor-in-residence: the Count Vladislav III Alucard. He comes to us highly recommended and will be replacing Maestro Oren, who has accepted a commission at the Teatro Real Madrid. We wish him all the best, and extend a warm welcome to his successor.”  She gestures a hand to Vlad, who bows flashily to the crowd.

 

Integra feels their attention crawl over her. She straightens her spine and pulls her shoulders back; she will not cringe in front of them. Still, if she feels it so intently, she can only imagine what Vlada must be experiencing. This mightn’t have been a good idea after all, but his eyes are riveted on her and so she carries on.

 

“And of course, any production is only as good as its cast! Thus, it is also my great pleasure to announce a new addition to the company. Honoured guests, allow me to introduce the new diva of the Opera Populaire, late of the Berlin Opera: Miss Rip van Winkle.” 

 

At that, the susurrus of whispers crescendos into a flurry of sound, like musicians rustling their sheet-music all at once. 

 

Integra smiles despite herself. 

 

 

—

 

 

_If the Mssr. was making a professional point, she’d made it well._

 

_In her time, Rip van Winkle was known throughout Europe as the best coloratura of her age. Strikingly pretty and a miracle on the stage, the rumour was that she was also more than a little mad. But her voice — and the backing of her wealthy patron — was enough to ensure she kept singing._

 

_And sing she did, with a voice as agile as it was high._

 

_Miss van Winkle was, by anyone’s estimation, a coup for any house to secure. She was also — and may God forbid me for speaking ill of the dead — a_ heinous _bitch._

 

_To say we never got on would be an understatement. Circumstances made us rivals and her actions made us enemies. But even I had to admit that she was gifted, possessed of a real genius._

 

_Lucia was_ her _role._

 

_And she might have been out of her mind, but she wasn’t off her game._

 

 

—

 

 

The girl in question dips an elegant curtsey from the midst of the crowd. Her patron, a portly little merchant with a sly smile, is posted at her side looking smug as a toad. There’s something almost child-like about the man; Integra supposes it might be the pure malice she can feel oozing off of him.

 

It makes her think of nothing so much as a young boy pulling the wings off of butterflies. Integra doesn’t much care for him or his piggy little eyes, but there also isn’t much she can do about it. 

 

The mad songbird comes with her smug patron, and Integra will settle for nothing less than the best in this. This is their first season, and Vlada’s debut. She can’t afford to bugger it up.

 

The applause that follows — much more enthusiastic now, she notes — gives Integra an opportunity to observe the girl. She’s almost too perfect, with her willowy frame and hip-length black hair. Her big eyes are a stunning violet and her skin is so pale Integra can see the veins like lace under her skin. Her bone structure is as delicate as bone china. 

 

Miss van Winkle wears a dreamy smile, as if perpetually listening to distant music. Her patron’s hand is tight around hers, but the girl just smiles out at the audience placid as a doe.

 

She will be a perfect Lucia, but Integra doesn’t believe her act for a second.

 

Integra watches Vlada’s eyes narrow at the show the two of them make, and resolves to ask him what he thinks of that little production. 

 

 

—

 

 

_Miss van Winkle rose from obscurity as so many chorus-girls did: with the help of a powerful patron. That she was gifted was only a side benefit; an especial perk that made her exceptional. Her Major would have bought a career for her regardless._

 

_As was customary, a patron would pay for lessons and gowns, public events and a lifestyle suitable to a Diva, and promote her career in whichever small ways he could be of service. In return, the songbirds were charming conversation pieces at Society parties, fluttering about in their gilt cages._ _Most were every bit as kept as the little birds they so resembled, serving as expensive baubles for a certain set of society gentleman._

 

_I can’t blame her for thinking that Phillipe and I were in a similar arrangement. It wouldn’t have been unusual. Her patron, for example, was a wealthy factory owner of some distinction and repute._

 

_Miss van Winkle was not his only investment._

 

_She was, however, amongst his favourites._

 

_He had approached the Opera Populaire with a proposal to feature his pet soprano in return for a cut of the profits, as was customary. Although Mssr. Integra would confess — later and amongst friends — to having had reservations, there had been no grounds to decline._

 

_Walter had made discreet inquiries, but there hadn’t been anything to find. The Major had hidden his tracks well, and given the circumstances I suspect Walter mightn’t have looked too hard._

 

_Miss van Winkle, you see, wanted the role of Lucia. Her patron, on the other hand, wanted the Opera Populaire._

 

 

—

 

 

“What an excellent evening, my dear Monsieur.” 

 

The Major speaks English well, though the German accent lingers. It isn’t the words that bother her, but the tone; plummy and with a hint of condescension. Integra struggles to keep her expression placid. 

 

Vlada notices, of course, and takes the attention upon himself. 

 

“Is it not grand? The thrill, the crowds, the adrenaline of a new production… ah, _envidiadme, allí estuve!_ It will be magnificence, and you, _diva_ , shall be sublime.” He flings his arms flamboyantly wide, encompassing the whole of the waifish soprano in the gesture.

 

He’s laying it on a little thick, in Integra’s opinion, but he isn’t wrong. 

 

_Don’t be a sourpuss. She’s the perfect soprano for Lucia, and Vlada deserves a success_.

 

So Integra bites her tongue, smiles at the Major, and chimes her champagne flute with his. 

 

“You are too kind, _Mein Herr_ ”, she demurs. “We would have nothing but the finest for our new prima donna.”

 

“Of course, my dear Monsieur”, he murmurs, unctuous and unpleasant as treacle. When he smiles, it doesn’t reach his eyes. She doubts the one she gives him in return does either. 

 

She knows she’ll have to keep tabs on this one, and that’s more work she doesn’t need on her desk. She isn’t disappointed when Miss van Winkle acquires a headache of convenience, and her patron insists on seeing her home. 

 

“A headache? Goodness, what a fragile blossom is our new diva.” The Count’s assessment is scathing, even though the obnoxious pair is barely out of earshot.

 

“Don’t be a prick, Vlada; it’s unbecoming. If I had to deal with that man, I’d have lost my mind as well.” She tries to be the voice of reason, but even she has her reservations. The soprano might be talented, but there’s something brittle about her — like the crystal of the new chandelier, generously provided by her patron. 

 

_To make Miss van Winkle’s jewels sparkle_ , he’d said with an insincere smile. 

 

Her skin crawls. Quite suddenly, she wants nothing more than to be gone from here; she wants Vlada, and his music, and the quiet company of her dearest friend.

 

“I think I’ve had quite enough revelry for one evening. Vlada, let me walk you to the door and wish you good-night.” 

 

He studies her for a moment, then seems to come to some private conclusion. He nods.

 

Integra departs, says her unaccompanied farewells at a polite but intent pace, and meets him again in the time it takes him to not drink a glass of the excellent red. 

 

“My dear Count”, she says when she returns, knowing all eyes are on her. Still, there’s some fun to be found in it; Vlada, thankfully, shares her sense of humour, and dips a deep and sweeping bow. 

 

“Monsieur Integra. It has been a lovely evening but alas, I fear I must depart. May I have the pleasure of your company to the steps?” They resume the charade as naturally as breathing. 

 

“You may.” She takes his arm easily; they’ve always seemed to move naturally around one another, and the crowd shifts to let them through. There are whispers already, undoubtedly… but they’re well out of earshot and tomorrow’s problem, anyway. Tonight has been a professional triumph, with Vlada at her side to share it with. 

 

She only regrets that they must maintain the polite fiction of retiring to different abodes; she has no doubt he’ll be winding his way back through the Catacombs within the hour. 

 

He guides her through the hall with ease, but the top of the marble steps, he stops. 

 

The sky is pregnant with snow, and Integra can smell cold in the air, but between the heat of his proximity and her own jangling nerves, she can’t feel it. His driver waits in the car, ostensibly to keep warm. 

 

She appreciates the discrete consideration for their privacy. 

 

He steps inwards, raising her gloved hand to his lips. He inclines over it, a little bow, and holds her gaze as he does. Integra shivers despite herself. 

 

His smile widens and darkens; in the half-light of the coming snow, his teeth are as white as the porcelain mask. A thrill races down her spine.

 

“Integra, Integra… Integra. You were magnificent tonight. Behold, your Opera, Integra!” 

 

“And yours as well, dear Count”, she points out, something like triumph fizzing through her veins. “You’re our Maestro, are you not?” 

 

The smile that beams across his face is luminous. She only wishes she could see all of it. 

 

“Indeed, I am”, he purrs, and by God, she wants him to play her like a violin. 

 

“Good night, Monsieur”, he murmurs, and her stomach clenches with anticipation. “I expect I shall see you soon.” The kiss he presses to her knuckles is over quickly, but the sear of heat lingers long after he disappears into his waiting black car. 

 

 

—

 

 

“Integra.” 

 

She freezes in place. It’s the predatory awareness of the owl, not the frightened stillness of the doe. He knows she has never been more aware of his presence.

 

Certainly, he has never been more aware of hers. 

 

Every one of his senses has become a thing that needs Integra. His fingertips and lips tingle for want of hair to touch, skin to caress. She is a vision in crimson and gold; the silk dress glows sleekly in the candlelight; the gossamer gold catching the flame’s every flicker. Integra’s perfume is a barely-there trace of jasmine: a single drop where her pulse beats strongest; the fragile skin at the nape of the neck and the tender flesh behind her knee.

 

She is a breath of far-distant summer, skin dusky as a stormy sunset. His mouth waters to chase beneath the flower to the fruit; Vlad wants to know the way it tastes to kiss sweat from the dip of her clavicle, to chase a bead of it down the hollow of her spine. Vlada has smelled the sea before, once, at the mouth of the Bosphorus. 

 

He thinks of iodine, dark and rich and lush; of brine and salt on his lips, and thirsts. 

 

“Vlada…” 

 

The silence of the grotto shatters into the melody of her voice. She is a glorious mezzo, rich as a square of chocolate. What he wouldn’t give to write her music but lamentably for him, his capable Monsieur couldn’t hold a tune if he loaned her a bucket. 

 

She is perfect, and his heart breaks with love for her. 

 

He takes a single step towards her. Integra, frozen in place, watches his approach in the mirror; it’s the only one he owns and even then only out of the cruel necessity of practice. His conductor’s stand is set up before it, and Integra has his baton in her hand. 

 

The folio is open before her. 

 

He hadn’t left it that way. 

 

For a moment, he is incandescent with rage. He opens his mouth to do something — he hasn’t quite decided what yet — when she robs him of all the air in his lungs. 

 

“I can hear it.” Her voice is hoarse, choked with emotion.

 

Her eyes meet his in the reflection, and she feels every muscle tense as though primed for movement. He can make music out of thin air. She wants to close the distance and feel those miraculous hands on her. She has wanted Vlada for so many lonely years, and he is so close to her that she can nearly feel the heat of him against her back.

 

She wants to make him sweat; wants to crack open that patrician mask he still insists on wearing around her. Integra wants to split the shell of him like a pomegranate and plunge greedy fingers into all the arils of him. She wants to bring red-stained fingertips to her lips so as to taste the sweetness of his devotion. 

 

She wants him so badly her mouth waters. 

 

He steps closer and closer, as though reeled in by an inexorable thread; until the silk of his suit brushes against her hair. He is nearly pressed to her, and those scant centimetres are an eternity. She is tired of waiting, tired of wanting. 

 

“I can hear every note, every countermelody…” 

 

She tries not to sound breathless. She fails. He has written a masterpiece and dedicated it to her. He has made magic in her name: created something from nothing, and the scope of his adoration strikes her dumb.

 

“Vlada…”, she whispers into the silence, and isn’t sure what she wants, but somehow he seems to understand what she needs. When his hand raises to cradle hers, a scant breath away from touching, Integra allows it. 

 

Her hand raises, his following in tandem, and in a sweeping gesture, starts again. 

 

Between them, the music swells as they conduct the silence. 

 

Here, the violins with the melody, a swell of crescendo into a taut fermata. The cellos surge forward, sinuous as a river; desire answered with passion, and over it all yearning. 

 

If ever she doubted his love, this puts it to rest. 

 

And through it all, they move in tandem. He never touches her; their perfect synchronicity precludes it. She can still feel the weight of his presence behind her. In the mirror, their gazes lock; she could no more look away than she could stop breathing. 

 

They say nothing, too enraptured in the music they’re sharing for speech. 

 

The ink on the page sings of trumpets, strident and strings triumphant. French horns swell with martial pride; the hunt is led. And over it, over the lushness of it all, the soprano soars at the very limit of the human voice. 

 

They dance through in perfect time until the aria is over, and Integra lets her hands fall to her side. The opera is a thing of beauty, but she can’t bring herself to tear her gaze away from Vlada’s. 

 

The ragged sound of their mingled breathing is the only sound in their little catacomb, and he looks half-mad with hunger. But the mask is expressionless, cold, and suddenly, finally, after years of biting her tongue, Integra has had enough. 

 

“Vlada”, she murmurs, and turns her back to the mirror. 

 

She’s facing him now, and the effect she’s had on him is clear. His pupils have turned his grey eyes to the corona of an eclipse; blackness nearly swallows her. She reaches up, deliberately, and undoes the clasp of the mask. 

 

His hands slowly rise to her wrists. He cradles them gently, exerting no pressure. 

 

“Integra”, he murmurs, and she scowls. 

 

“Be reasonable. It’s like wearing socks to bed”, she teases, and it’s worth every hardship, every bitter tear, every wish on every single stupid falling star, just to hear the laugh that bubbles up in his throat. 

 

He has a beautiful laugh. 

 

“Please, Vlada.” It’s the first time she’s ever said that word to him. 

 

Just as suddenly as they rose up, his hands flutter down like birds to roost. 

 

“Swear to me this changes nothing.” 

 

“Don’t be naive, Vlada. This changes everything for us.” 

 

He glares at her, so she relents. 

 

“But nothing in the world, least of all your face, could change the way I feel about you. I love you. I hate that I’ve never seen both sides of your smile. I hate the fact that the only reason I’ve even seen your face at all is because of that… that _monster_. That’s not the face I want to see. I want to see you smile, and laugh, and say you love me without half of your face hidden. It’s only me. Integra. And I want it to be you staring up at me tonight, Vlada, not that bloody mask.”

 

At her blunt words, his pale skin goes a painful-looking shade of carmine. 

 

“Integra!” 

 

She bats her eyes up at him. “What?”, she asks, innocently. “Would you rather be on top?” 

 

That manages to startle a laugh out of him, a real one, and she smiles up at him. She’d always known her Vlada would grow taller than her, but it’s nice not to have to stare down at someone. 

 

“You’re bold”, he teases. “Who says I want to take you to bed?” 

 

The look she gives him is telling. “Don’t lie, it’s a sin.” 

 

“So are carnal relations before marriage.” 

 

She stares at him for a moment, and then snorts. “You absolute fraud. As though you care! But very well, then I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.” 

 

“You’re cavalier for a mortal sin.” 

 

“Don’t flatter yourself, you’re venial at best. Vlada, my arms are getting tired. I’m taking this thing off. Do try not to faint.” 

 

“I should say the same to you.” 

 

She doesn’t dignify that with a response; instead, she simply brings her hands down and puts the mask firmly aside. His eyes close, instinctively, and his fists clench to keep from covering his face. She could love him for that alone.

 

She doesn’t make light of the moment; instead, Integra takes a good, long look at what she’s revealed. 

 

His face is disfigured, that much is true. 

 

The skin stretches in places and puckers in others, and the whole thing has been rendered waxy by the mask’s constant pressure. But she knows that the closed eye is grey and fanned with dark lashes, and the set of the jaw is brave. The cheekbones are high, the nose is aquiline, and it is the dearest face in the whole world to her, because it is his.

 

Integra’s hands raise again and he must sense her movement, for he flinches away from her. It breaks her heart, but she doesn’t allow her grief to show. Instead, she offers tenderness. 

 

The hands which had only an instant ago summoned music from ink and paper now cradle his cheeks, and he shudders at the sensation of warmth on skin that has only ever known the cold comfort of a mask. 

 

“Vlada”, the angel in front of him whispers, and he is afraid. 

 

When she steps closer, and her hands tangle into the blackness of his hair, he opens his eyes. 

 

His gaze meets hers, and she doesn’t look away. 

 

“There you are”, she murmurs. “My genius. My own angel of music. My dearest one. I’m going to have you now, Vlada”, she informs him tartly, and God help her but he has a beautiful laugh. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deep apologies for the delay! Irony of ironies: this chapter was never supposed to exist until I sent a completed chapter off to my editor and she immediately returned with: "Where's the first bit?" 
> 
> Which led to a re-read and the realization that it really did need another couple thousand words of authorial masochism. And so here we are! Thank you all for your patience, and I hope you enjoy. 
> 
> If you're familiar with the Phantom of the Opera, Vlada's red outfit here is the Red Death; presumably, he left his sword at home this time. 
> 
> Additionally, it wouldn't have been uncommon in this time period for singers -- especially female singers -- to have been kept by Patrons. Opera, and the ballet, were notorious for facilitating the meeting of wealthy men and beautiful girls. Chorus-girls and ballerinas were, unfortunately, considered only marginally more classy than the average hoochie.


	8. A Prima Vista

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Seras, sir. Victoria Seras”, the girl stammers.
> 
> Victoria Seras, selling flowers in winter. A little Proserpina, this golden child in a grey city, with red roses tossed at her feet. 
> 
> How could he have not known that such a little miracle sat on his stoop unattended?
> 
> “And where did you learn to sing like that, Miss Victoria Seras?” 
> 
> “Seras, sir. Just Seras, if it please you.” 
> 
> “And if it doesn’t?” He’s intrigued by the bite in her tone; she’s got all the canny resilience of a rat terrier. 
> 
> “I’d insist”, she says easily, and he believes it. Behind him, Integra reeks of amusement; the horsey set have their soft spots for small golden terriers, and it would seem Integra is not so above it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a prima vista   
> lit. "at first sight". Sight-reading (i.e. played or sung from written notation but without prior review of the written material.

_The world of the opera is a glittering one, but it’s not for the faint of heart._

 

_I’d started watching it from the outside in, gawping at the steps as often as I could. The other girls had known that the corners of the Opera Populaire were my post, and none had dared to take it; I’d been known to bloody a nose or knuckle if my patience was tested._

 

_Eavesdropping at the Opera Populaire was the one bright spot in those lean winter days, and a treat I defended jealously._

 

_I’d sung for posies then; roses for the dapper gents and nosegays for the pretty ladies in their fine frocks. They’d looked like so many lovely birds in all their greenhouse plushness, and the air around the Opera had been thick with music for as long as I’d been breathing it in._

 

_Ever since the young lady Mssr. took over, in fact, and the Maestro came up to join her when I was young._

 

_The Opera was always full, and I was grateful that I was flush enough to pay the rent and the grocer and even — once! —to buy a small orange. I’d peeled it with my nails and eaten it by the vents to stay warm. The pipes carried sound, and the stone was prone to echo in any case._

_That was the first time I heard the music._

 

_It came from nowhere and everywhere, so high and fast and breath-taking that it made my heart seize somewhere in my throat. I’d wanted nothing so much as to have that._

 

_I have been hungry for want of food, and I have been cold for lack of warmth, but I had never in my life wanted anything more than to hear that music again._

 

_I never heard a voice; it was only ever the music._

 

_I went back to the vents the next day, and practised religiously, following the unseen tutor’s regimen. Not for any particular reason — I had no thoughts in my silly head at all about a career in opera — but only for a love of the music, and the company of my own voice as I worked late into the evening.  
_

_But like a bird, a melody tends to return to its home, and so I came to the Maestro’s attention, and for that I am grateful._

 

_It happened rather serendipitously; I had no patron and no agent, no training and certainly no money. In short: I was an arriviste and challenger to a crown I had no idea existed. But where I saw a pretender, he saw potential._

 

_And yet, even with his guidance, there was a period of… acclimation._

 

_Certainly, the Opera was rife with the sort of politicking that only old money and new diamonds can inspire. I cannot say I ever became accustomed to it; I only ever managed to acquire enough good sense to muddle through mostly unscathed._

 

_Of course, I was fortunate enough to have excellent instruction._

 

_The Mssr. and the Maestro were by definition exemplary in their craft, so their tutelage offered me the opportunity to learn from two consummate masters. In the night-time glow of candles, they came alive like panthers._

 

_—_

  
  
The chandelier glitters magnificently above, refracting light like a kaleidoscope across the marble walls. Couples whirl in iridescent patterns across the ballroom floor, but without her spectacles, the beautiful dresses look like so many smears of paint.

 

“Damned Impressionists”, she mutters, and to her left, she hears her companion snort. 

 

“Not a word”, Integra hisses through her teeth at the Count. She can feel him grinning down at her; he all but radiates amusement. “You try fitting them over a mask, and see how you like it.” 

 

“I am flattered by your trust”, Vlada croons at her. “Don’t worry, my dear Monsieur. I shall not steer you wrong.” 

 

That earns him an arch look, but Integra is too pleased with their successes this evening to press the point. She’s finally managed to secure a sponsor for Vlada’s opera, and she’s so happy she could sing. 

 

It would appear the young Prince has a taste for the opera. 

 

_Or at least for the chorus-girls_ , she thinks, but doesn’t look gift horses — even Trojan ones — in the mouth too closely.

 

Integra can’t wait to tell Vlada the news. She wants to whisper it into his ear and watch the magnitude of what she’s accomplished for him take his breath away. Years of planning, of work and sacrifice, and here they are. Here _he_ is. 

 

And he is breath-taking tonight. 

 

His black hair is slicked glossily back; his eyes are dark as ink, and the bone-white of his porcelain mask reflects the light, catching every eye. 

 

Integra knows the debutantes flutter their fans and lashes at him. It’s never bothered her. She knows his eyes have always been on her, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. 

 

Integra knows he’d eat any of those insipid girls alive. 

 

“I haven’t said a thing!”, he protests, and she tightens her grip on his hand just a little more. His gloved thumb traces patterns over the silk covering her knuckles, and the Count’s smile is wide and wild. 

 

She can all but hear the flock of ladies gathered at the bottom of the stairs sigh in a chorus. 

 

_Ridiculous, honestly_ , she thinks a little uncharitably, and chides herself for noticing them at all. 

 

“I can hear you thinking it.” It’s almost true; she can read him like music. 

 

“That’s the angel of your better nature, Integra, chastising you for your vanity.” He knows her well and can play her like an organ. 

 

“ _My_ vanity?!” 

 

She’s careful to keep her voice down, but her gaze rakes over him. She tries for disdainful but doesn’t quite land it, if his leer is any response. When he inclines to purr in her ear, shivers race down the exposed skin at the nape of her neck.

 

“You’re not wearing your glasses, Integra.” 

 

Vlad has grown tall enough to watch as the fine hairs raise as the shudder passes over her. He would very much like to trace them with his lips, and might yet do so.

 

“Maybe I didn’t want to spend my evening watching insipid girls make cow-eyes at you. My dear Count, you preen shamelessly for their benefit.” 

 

Integra always notices the silly girls in overwrought frocks. He doesn’t. He’s in the presence of history. Why should he ever notice the bystanders? But he’s still charmed by her quiet jealousy nevertheless. There’s something gratifying about it, and he pulls his shoulders back a bit with silly pride.

 

“For _their_ benefit, Monsieur? No, you must be incorrect. Am I not at your service? If that is so — and it is — then it follows that my preening is for you.” 

 

He grins wide as a shark, showing all his teeth. 

 

“And between us, Integra”, Vlada whispers into her ear as they take the final step on to the floor. “I think you rather like my preening.”

 

The breath punches out of her. 

 

_Bold as day_ , she thinks, even as her head swims for want of air. 

 

Vlada’s always had a peculiar effect on her, and to have him look at her like that — that brilliant mind of his honed to razor focus — is a little like making music out of air and ink. 

 

“A slavish need to impress? It’s like having a dog”, Integra says instead, because she’ll be damned if she gives him the satisfaction of blushing. 

 

He laughs at her, the bastard. “Where I’m from, my dear Monsieur, dogs sleep in the bed with their masters.”

 

“Lie down with dogs…”, she starts, and he cuts in with a sly:

 

“Please do.” 

 

“…and wake up with fleas”, Integra continues, somewhat unsteadily. “Vladislav”, she breathes, “you are _shameless_.” 

 

His eyes are bright as coals, and as hot. She feels her skin prickle under the force of his gaze. 

 

“So you’ve said. But yes, I am stricken, Monsieur, yes _, stricken_. I hunger for your laugh and I want to know the joy of your whispers. Integra, my Integra… Eros’ arrow has fair wounded me with love for you.”

 

“Careful, my dear Count”, she chides, even as her cheeks flare red. “I hear that’s lethal.” 

 

“You’ll have to tell me, my dear Monsieur”, he murmurs, and bows over her hand, fragile as a captured dove in his palm. His breath heats the silk of her glove, and she shivers despite herself.    
  


“Vlada, you are a terrible flirt.” 

  
“Terrible? Monsieur, I thought I was doing quite well.” He has the gall to smile at her.

  
“You’re a cad”, she accuses him, trying to hide the flames of interest with blazing indignation.

  
If only she knew. “Indeed I am”, he agrees amicably. “Dance with me anyways, my dear monsieur.”

 

“Aren’t you the silver-tongued one”, she snaps, even as she bows a little. “Why should I?” 

 

That makes him chuckle. As though she doesn’t know full well why. 

 

“Because nobody else will let you lead?”, he says instead, simply to get the joy of the last word. 

 

“Oh!”, she huffs, and the playful swat of her fan against his bicep is the sweetest kiss he’s ever received. 

 

—

 

_When the Maestro escorted the Monsieur down the grand steps, I admit my nerves quailed. I knew who they were, of course._

 

Everyone _did._

 

_I knew that the woman in the black opera cloak was the Monsieur Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, the mastermind behind the Opera Populaire. Her laughing companion, then, would be the Maestro of her orchestra, the Compte Alucard._

 

_I wasn’t the sort to get stage-fright, but the Maestro had a way of looming just so that inspired a stammering kind of stupidity. Chorus girls or noblemen — everyone had a way of going silent around him._

 

_Except for the Monsieur._

 

_If the Maestro was tempestuous and deadly as a gale, the Monsieur was lethal as a glacier. They’d been going together since their first season, but nobody said a word._

 

_Nobody dared._

 

_But business was business, and shyness wouldn’t sell —_

 

_roses for the dapper gents, nosegays for the ladies~_

 

_So I sang, the best I could given the circumstances._

 

_I’d listened to the angel of music’s song all day long, year in and year out, and practised it in the holy echoes of the church when I could. And I sang for my bread and butter: practised scales and arpeggios and high trills; learned runs and glissandos and the pure note at the most crystalline heights of my range —_

 

_roses for the dapper gents, nosegays for the ladies ~_

 

_I noticed his hand moving — keeping time — and the penny dropped._ He _was the unseen musician. I had only ever been eavesdropping._

 

_But the music carried on towards the finale, and I could no more end the recital than I could touch the moon. The clear winter air carried the notes well, so I held the Monsieur’s gaze and the Maestro’s attention and hit the note I had practised so many times._

 

_This moment is etched into my memory._

 

_Even now that I am old and grey, I can remember the swooping feeling as triumph heaved into sickly terror._

 

_The Maestro turned around, clapping slowly, and for a ghoulish second, I thought I had seen a skull. It had only been the mask, of course, but the effect was alarming and I dropped my basket, spilling winter roses on to the snowy cobblestones._

 

_—_

 

“What is your name, flower girl?” 

 

She is dressed in wool so thin as to be almost felted, and her fingertips and lips are blue with the cold. Her nose is runny and red, and her hair is pulled back untidily. 

 

She is pretty, and common as a winter daisy, and she has the voice of an angel. 

 

He wants to take her apart to see how she works. He wants to master the instrument that is her voice and knows from the way Integra has gone very still at his back that she is intrigued by the prospect of her talent.

 

A prima donna of their very own, to end their reliance on the mad songbird. 

 

“Seras, sir. Victoria Seras”, the girl stammers.

 

Victoria Seras, selling flowers in winter. A little Proserpina, this golden child in a grey city, with red roses tossed at her feet. 

 

How could he have not known that such a little miracle sat on his stoop unattended?

 

“And where did you learn to sing like that, Miss Victoria Seras?” 

 

“Seras, sir. Just Seras, if it pleases you.” 

 

“And if it doesn’t?” He’s intrigued by the bite in her tone; she’s got all the canny resilience of a rat terrier. 

 

“I’d insist”, she says easily, and he believes it. Behind him, Integra reeks of amusement; the horsey set have their soft spots for small golden terriers, and it would seem Integra is not so above it all. 

 

The flower girl scuffs at the ground with the toe of a worn-out boot and Vlad is acutely reminded of the way the cold can bite through thin soles. 

 

“And you did, I think, sir”, the girl admits finally, staring at the snow piled at her feet. 

 

That catches his attention like a fishhook to the cheek.

 

“Do tell”, he says with a wide and dangerous smile, and the bold little miss raises her chin like she’s spoiling for a fight. _Glory of glories_ , he thinks, _I have found her. I have found our Christine_. 

 

“I only ever heard the music in the air”, the girl says with growing confidence, blue eyes defiant. “I wasn’t eavesdropping, sir! I was working, there near the pipes. They’re warm, when the wind’s got a bite, you see? But I suppose the sound carries, sir, because I could hear music. Never a voice, not that I heard, but I could follow along.” 

 

“You could… follow along.” 

 

He sounds incredulous, and that gets her back up. Seras squares her shoulders and nods pertly. 

 

“I could. I _can_ ”, she says with pointed emphasis. The Monsieur’s eyebrow raises behind her specs, and Seras realizes she’s seriously outgunned here. But she’s come too far to get colder feet now, and anyways — he’s insulted her voice, and that’s one slight she won’t tolerate. 

 

She’s never backed down from a fight before, and she’ll be damned if she starts now.

 

“I defy you to try, flower girl.” 

 

“And if I win?” 

 

He isn’t surprised that she’s a haggler, but he’s delighted she has the gall to try it with him. He pauses for a moment, as if in thought. Integra remains silent at his back, so he takes the tacit approval at face-value and offers the apple. 

 

“Then the part is yours.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we go! 
> 
> I consider this to be the first big chunk of Music of the Night, and phew, it was a ride. 
> 
> A few notes for context: 
> 
> Flower girls were not uncommon in the Victorian, Belle Epoque and Edwardian eras. They ranged in age from children to young women in their early twenties, always poor and often orphaned. Eliza Doolittle from Pygmalion (or My Fair Lady, if you prefer) would be a perfect example. However, the flower girl was something of a euphemism; stories also talk about young women selling their 'flowers', so it had a bit of a bad reputation. 
> 
> I figured Seras would go by her surname after her parents are murdered. Editorial decision. 
> 
> Seras is what's known as a coloratura soprano. For an example of her voice, consider Lisette Oropesa.
> 
> A bit of soundtrack: "Overture" and "Think of Me" from the movie OST were on repeat; Overture for Alucard and Integra, and Think of Me for Seras' singing. 
> 
> And yes. Alucard did just compare Seras to a corgi.


	9. Col Pugno

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “YOU!”
> 
> Integra, following in on the tails of Philippe's topcoat, has never been addressed so casually in her life. But it would appear that she isn’t the intended target of Seras’ wrath; rather, she’s simply collateral damage. 
> 
> Pip shifts beside her, and she cuts him and his bloody nose a look.
> 
> An angel of music, a Valkyrie with a sharp right hook…
> 
> No.
> 
> “HIM?!”, Vlada snarls, sounding murderous.
> 
> Oh no.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we have our cast: 
> 
> The dashing and tempestuous genius, the Maestro of the Opera, has composed his opera -- Le Phantome -- and conscripted/invited a young soprano named Victoria Seras to audition for the role of Christine. 
> 
> The circus is overseen by their long-suffering manager and the Maestro's patron and lover, the Monsieur Integra Hellsing. She keeps bums in seats... and aces up her sleeve in the form of young Prince Philippe Bernadotte, a childhood friend and confidante.

_Such was my abrupt baptism into the rip-tides of the Opera Populaire._  
  
The Monsieur looked like an angel, and I understood instinctively why the holy host announced themselves: be not afraid _. She was blonde and mighty, like the seraphs on the stained glass windows of the little parish church I attended for the acoustics._

_The Maestro, on the other hand, was dark as the Devil and much more sinister._

_He had a way of making everyone feel as though they were on that evening’s menu, and his perfectionism was infamous. He suffered no fools, but his orchestra was sublime and the Monsieur’s control of the manager’s office was absolute._

_And after all, there was no arguing with the results._

_Between them, they had transformed a failing company into bleeding edge theatre, hosting only the best and brightest talents. Stars were born under their glittering chandelier, and they had resolved that I was to be one of them._

_Which is not to say that it was easy._

_—_

 

“AGAIN!”, the Maestro thunders at her. “You are flat! _Flat_! Do you hear yourself at all?! My Christine is not flat; she is not sharp; she is perfection and conviction and you, _flower-girl_ , are wilting all over my score! I will not have it!”

“I’m not doing it on purpose”, Seras hears herself snarl back and wonders if she’s lost her mind or just her ear for pitch. “And my name is Seras, Maestro, remember? _Seras_.”

“I know your name, _flower-girl_ , and when I want to use it I shall”, he snaps, sour as a rotted Christmas plum. Seras huffs out a breath through her nose. Obnoxious ass.

_Don’t let him get to you_ , _Seras_ , she tells herself sternly. _He’s doing it to see how you perform under stress. You’ve sung for your supper all your life and you aren’t scared of his bluster. But… if he says you’re flat, you’re flat. Do better next time._  
  
“Again”, she growls out, a direct challenge, and he grins ghoulishly at her. The mask glints like a fresh bone in the candle-light, and she knows he’s doing it on purpose. Seras refuses to turn tail; instead, she holds his gaze and shows him her teeth in a smile. He raises his arms, the baton bright as a scalpel in his hand. 

Challenge accepted.

This time, when her voice soars into a crystalline note she’s never heard it hit before, she’s bloody well pitch-perfect. 

 

—

 

_The Maestro and his patronage also afforded me the opportunity to advance my station in life._

_Without the connections of the theatre and the Monsieur’s careful guidance, I would have never survived, let alone met and married the love of my life. Of course, I didn’t know ours would be a fairy-tale romance at the time. I was far too busy proving a point to him to notice._

_And if I had noticed, I might have been more alarmed; those older stories can be pretty grim._

_—_

 

“I don’t see a need to learn this, and there’s no bloody sense in it either”, Seras mutters to herself, scuffing the toes of her ballet shoes into the chalk. “What diva needs to dance?”

The Maestro had informed her that the role of Christine would require dancing, so God knows she’ll have to learn, but it doesn’t change the fact that her feet are screaming at her and she’s nowhere near finished her day. 

To make matters worse, the Maestro has summoned her for supper with the Monsieur and some silly financier, and it will undoubtedly be a long damn evening.

“I have a pair of lungs and a mouth for singing… who cares if I’ve got two left feet?”

The chuckle makes her get up on to her toes like an angry cat, all bristles and claws. She doesn’t know that voice, and the sub-basements are a long ways away from anything but the stables.

“A chorus-girl with two left feet would be an unsuccessful business-woman indeed”, the man answers her as he steps out of the off-passage. He’s handsome, if a little rakish with his eye-patch and all, but the suit’s a tailored cut of fine wool and smells of vetiver and expensive cologne.

A dandy, then, and Seras’ attention narrows. She knows the type.

The one concession to character is a thick braid snaking around his shoulders, and Seras is instantly drawn to the colour. It’s the same shade as an autumn leaf and looks gloriously soft. She’s never had soft hair; she’d been far too poor to spare the egg to put in it before, and while she’s got the tuppence for it now, she doesn’t have the damned time to sit still.

If she gets the part, she might be able to have both the time and the two pennies to rub together, and maybe something more upmarket than buttermilk to keep her hands soft. The dandies on the theatre steps had promised other ways of getting the money but none had required using her voice, and the only flowers Seras ever planned on selling grew in the dirt. 

“Don’t be stupid”, Seras spits, temper making her lip curl into a nasty little sneer. “A chorus-girl’s no business-woman. She’s an artist; a _musician_.” 

There’s pride in the art, and she won’t let him scoff at it.

Seras thinks of the way the Monsieur can cut to the marrow with a single frosty sentence, and pours all that patrician disdain into three words:

“And _you_ are?”

_Well, that’s not bad_ , she thinks, and then her stomach sinks when he bows over her hand, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. He doesn’t seem quite as frightened as he ought to be.

He’s either mocking or prepositioning her, and Seras feels a blast of mortification so acute that she almost flees. But she’s never run from anything when she could fight it instead, so she narrows her eyes at him and holds her ground.

“Enchanted, Miss…”

“Seras.”

“Miss Seras”, he tries again, going for charming and — _damn him!_ — succeeding. He savours every syllable, and she realizes to her horror that she likes the way her name sounds in his accented English. That realization makes her wary; Seras’ impulses have been her worst enemy before.

“Just Seras”, she says, trying to nip this bad idea in the bud. It doesn’t work.

“Ah, and _you_ are English also”, he murmurs, sounding almost thoughtful. _Almost_ , because in her experience, those posh boys in their tops and tails are about as bright as a wet wick.

“That is most unusual”, he continues with that sunny southern French cadence, honied with the elegance of Cannes and the decadence of Monaco. She can easily imagine him on a yacht in the Riviera, or else floating down the Nile on some barge.

Mssr. Integra’s stories and books have put ideas in her head, and for a moment she can imagine herself floating past the pyramids with him. It’s a lovely daydream, but she’s met men like him before, and they never want anything but the worst for and from her.

Seras gives her head a shake. 

_Steady on, girl. That’s enough,_ she scolds herself sternly _. You’ll be late if you don’t run along now, and you know better than to keep the Maestro waiting._

But damned if she can't resist one more potshot. 

“Most unusual, eh? So’s strange men speaking to girls on their lonesome”, she snaps, because it’s true and he should know it. “But I was prepared to be polite about it.”

She had been, but now she’s gone and gotten herself attracted to him and soured her mood. She really must leave.

“Ah. I see; my apologies, Miss Just Seras. Please”, he murmurs, all earnestness. He even puts a hand to his heart, the cad. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am —!”

_He can’t be serious._ She’s had well and truly enough of his Prince Charming prattle now. It’s time to end it.

“Damn it, you!”, she interrupts. “I truly can’t be arsed to care who you are. What do you want with me?”

He grins at her, so wide and conspiratorial that she smiles back at him before she can think better of it. She wrestles it into a scowl instead, no doubt looking mildly insane in the process.

Seras wonders if her pride will ever recover, but gives it up as a bad job.

“I am… truly enchanted”, he murmurs, and seems to mean it. “Though, as with most enchantments… I am rather in need of a fair maiden to assist me.” 

He rubs the back of his neck, under the cravat, and she notices it’s red with embarrassment. As he stretches, the fine fabric of his shirt stretches across his chest. He's built quite fine; nicer than most London toffs. 

Seras finds her mouth has quite suddenly gone bone dry.

And then she thinks of what he's said, and her jaw drops. 

_Why, the nerve—_

“Those are a lot of upmarket words to ask a girl to lend you a hand!” She says it with considerable bite, disappointment souring her words.

“And would you… damn, how do the Americans say it…. —lend me a hand?” He sounds so earnest, so eager, so god damned charming, that she suddenly can’t stand herself. 

She takes it out on him, because he’s bloody rude and had it coming, the dirty lech.

“… Right. Sure, can do”, she agrees sunnily.

Seras cocks her arm back and in one violent snap, punches him as hard as she can in the nose. She feels something squash, and bares her teeth in a sharp grin. Her hands ball into fists in front of her. This’ll get martial soon and she’s itching for a good scuffle. She’s always had a great right hook.

“ **MAUDIT**!!!”, he splutters, clutching his probably-broken nose. “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!”

“You wanted a hand, pervert! I gave you one! And while we’re on the topic of whys, how _dare_ you!” She’s all but steaming, she’s so mad. “Why, the insinuation — I ought to blacken your other eye and give you a matching set! Really, what’s wrong with you, chatting up a girl on her own?! Didn’t your governess teach you manners?!”

“Chatting up?” He rolls the words around in his mouth like he’s tasting them. When he smiles, straight white teeth like so many military tombstones, she grits her teeth and steadies her nerve.

_You can’t like him_ , Seras scolds herself. _You can’t give him the satisfaction of it._

“Shut up!”, she snaps, and he grins at her through the blood streaming from his nose. It makes him look roguish. She’s horrified to realize it suits him, and this whole situation is making her more irate at the whole world and every- _bloody_ -body in it.

“I might not be posh like you with your suit and your… your… _braid,_ but I’m no slag for you to be asking a hand of! I don’t know who you are, and I certainly do not care now!”

She’s too mad to be frightened, and he seems more confused than angry, so she chalks it up as a win. And then she catches sight of his watch, peeping out from under his cuff, and feels her stomach sink into her sensible boots.

She’s late. _Ah, bollocks_ , she thinks with a sigh. _Dealing with Himself will be a treat now_. 

He opens his mouth to speak, and she prods him in the chest sharply for emphasis.

“Not another word or I’ll bloody you more!”, she snaps. “Your rudeness has made me tardy to a lesson, Monsieur.” He grins, wholly unrepentant, and the glare she shoots him could crack a mirror. “Good day”, she snaps, in the tone of voice that suggests she’d rather he take a flying leap off the parapets of Notre Dame. When she stomps away, he watches her go with keen appreciation — even as his hopes of rescue dwindle into a daffodil-yellow smear in the distance, and then disappear entirely.

He is lost, but he has found something valuable beyond measure.

She has arrested him in his place; he’s bleeding everywhere and he could care less, because he has seen an eclipse, a passing bullet, something momentous and fleeting as the aurora. His hand raises to his face, dabbing gingerly at the bloom of red that is almost surely a broken nose.

She had been a storm, a fury, a Valkyrie — and he is struck with the need to know this girl. She is absolutely free; it’s obvious she does not know him, nor recognize him. He is unaccompanied by his guards, and lacking livery. She can’t have known, and so treated him as she would any other man. It is a refreshing novelty, and he is thrilled by her spirit.

_How marvellous. I must make her acquaintance; at least to apologize for the misunderstanding. Ideally over dinner._

He will have to ask Integra to explain the nuances of the conversation so he may apologize property. Just as soon as he finds his way up from the fucking stables. A look down at his wrist shows he’s already running behind, and his dear friend does so insist on very English punctuality.

“Ahh, merde”, he groans, and settles in to wait for help lest he takes a wrong turn and ends up in the catacombs before he can meet his angel again. 

 

—

 

“Your Grace.”

Integra stands when he enters, greeting him warmly. She knows her father had once hoped she and the young Prince might become fond of each other, but Integra had always been steadfast in her affections for her sweetheart back home.

She had promised Vlada, and Pip… well. Pip had understood.

Philippe has always been a romantic, but he’s also a charmer. He’s handsome and tanned, a few years older than her and effervescent with the glamour of a life lived abroad. His flirtations with her are recreational and lacking in intent, but he’s nowhere near harmless.

While they’re more salacious than unsavoury, there are at least a few rumours about his military days. Now that he’s gotten into the harness, he’s had to behave a bit better. Nevertheless, she notices the twinkle in his eye —and the bloody nose — that tells her that her old friend has found his way into some mischief.

“Monsieur Hellsing, le plaisir est pour moi”, he murmurs, and she can see how he would charm the pretty birds out of their well-feathered nests. It’s never quite worked on her, though. She prefers the strange, stoic type. When she quirks an eyebrow at him, his regal facade thaws into the face of her old friend.

“Integra, chere, I do apologize for my tardiness. I managed to get myself lost in the sub-basement, near the stables —which are a nightmare to navigate, you know this? I had to wait for a stage-hand to offer directions if you can believe it!”

She can.

Those passage-ways saved her life, but then again, she’d grown up in them. She’s glad he’d listened to her; the sub-basements connect to Vlada’s chambers and the city’s catacombs. Given the miles of corridors and the years worth of protections Vlada has undoubtedly layered through them, Pip could easily have wandered in and never come out.

She’d always told him to sit and wait; the opera-house was always busy, and someone would be about soon.

“However do you manage not to get lost down there?”, he asks, and she shrugs.

“Practice”, she says out of habit, and then relents a little. “And Vlada and I mapped them all, of course.”

“Oh, of course”, Philippe teases with a roll of his eyes. “Incidentally, ma chere, that was five words. A record, I believe!”

He’s taken to counting how many words it takes before she mentions Vlada; she supposes she might be infatuated… but seeing as how they’ve been lovers for years now, she thinks that horse may well and truly have left the stable.

“But truly”, Pip continues with his cheerful insouciance, “I went to visit Candide, and found myself desperately turned about on my way back. It is a maze; is there a minotaur at the heart of it?”

Integra has never told him Vlada’s story, but she has often wondered if he’s guessed at it. She hasn’t had the nerve to ask but doesn’t need to. If Pip knows, he says nothing and she appreciates that.

“Say, Integra — can we suffice with the formalities? I am gagging for a cigarette.”

And that’s her dear friend back again. She settles into the chair with a happy sigh.

“Christ, _please_.” He lights her cigar for her, and she inhales in a slow drag, relishing the spice of tobacco and nicotine.

“Ahh, that’s lovely”, she murmurs, and his smile is fond. He’d offered her the first cigarillo, once upon a time, and the habit is a shared vice to deal with a precarious position.

“Philippe, it’s been too long.”

“Indeed; I haven’t seen you since India, and mon Dieu, how things have changed.”

She can feel the sadness in his words. His Grandfather, gone slowly to dementia; his brother, gone quickly from flu. Pip has never once expressed an interest in the crown, but there is not much he can do but to accept it the heavy burden that has been handed to him.

Integra empathizes.

Philippe gives his head a shake and the mood passes; his smile sparks and kindles like an ember. “Integra, I am glad to see you here and doing well. Aah, I am delighted. Delighted for you, my dearest.”

“I wish I could say the same for you!”, Integra retorts and means it. She knows he’ll understand. But she also means the bloody smear on his face; he’d swiped at it gingerly with a hankie, but the resulting mess is ghoulish. "W hat have you done to your nose?” She’s almost afraid to ask.

He smiles, dreamily, and Integra’s stomach plummets.

“Would you believe that the woman I shall one day marry gave me this?” 

“Pip! What, did she try to club you over the head and drag you back to her cave? You haven’t changed in the slightest! Take care, your grace — it might not have been lust! Those chorus-girls are starved for protein. They all try to follow Mademoiselle van Winkle’s example and eat like birds.”

He chuckles at the image, but it trails off into a groan as his nose aches at the movement.

“No… ah, Integra, I have met a Valkyrie — a vengeful and mighty creature, and beautiful as a blade, with the voice of an angel.”

She stares at him, incredulous. “The voice of an angel. Philippe, you are the patron of an opera house. That's three-quarters of the staff!”

“Do not look at me so coldly, my dear friend. It isn’t my fault I enjoy a strong woman! I maintain we could have had a wondrous romance, you and I…”

She scoffs. It’s an old and toothless refrain; they’d have killed each other within a week and they both know it. He carries on, still teasing 

“… but alas, it can now never be: I must find this woman! She has stolen my heart.”

He knows the precise moment when Integra thinks he’s gone mad.

There’s a certain stillness that envelops her; she seems as poised as a conductor in the heartbeat before the baton drops. It’s a magnificent look on her, but not one he recognizes. He suspects she’s picked it up from her mysterious companion, this Count Alucard.

“And possibly a tooth!”, she carries on, and he tunes back in as she rattles around her office. “Pip, this is ridiculous. Are you saying one of my employees assaulted you?!”

_Yes, and it was glorious._

A soldier’s death, carrying his heart sewn on his standard. War-like Mars, after all, had been the lover of fair Venus and spawned Eros, known to the English as Desire.

“I would have died a thousand little deaths at her hands or else one whole one!”, he declares. “I am carried triumphant in the arms of glorious Nike!”

She leans in suddenly, brows beetled over her spectacles. “Sweet Christ, are you concussed?”

Pragmatic, sensible Integra. She's probably checking his pupils. He bats her hands away from his eye-patch, and she acquiesces with poor grace.

“It is possible”, Pip concedes, utterly unconcerned. She had used such force, and there had been such martial passion in his angel’s eyes. The beauty of the battlefield and the bedroom after, and he had been enamoured…

_Just Seras_ ; Just, and fair, and beautiful as Eos’ burning rays.

Integra snorts.

“We can postpone dinner, Pip. This is ridiculous — you’re still bleeding, for God’s sake!”

“Nothing a bandage will not fix”, he says, and heaves himself to his feet. He will under no circumstances cancel this dinner; he has wanted to meet Integra’s amoreux for years. He’s not even sure he exists.

“Indeed — we shall make haste. I should hate to keep your temperamental Maestro waiting. How is your undercover lover, by the way?”

Integra’s lips quirk in a smirk. 

“Impatient, as ever. But he’s found himself a prodigy, and that seems to be giving him a project. She shall be accompanying us, as a point of fact. We’re meeting them in Box Five.”

“That poor prodigy”, Pip murmurs, and Integra thinks he’s kind enough to mean it. She has told him of Vlada’s more exacting methods.

“He sounds terrifying, Integra; you are a bold and brave woman.” He shoots her a canny look that leaves her trying not to grin. If Pip appreciates a strong woman, Integra approves of a man who won’t curl into a pillbug when she scowls at him.

“I have told you this before”, he adds, and that’s the thing. He has. He’d even said it with some respect, which given the circumstances Integra considered a professional compliment.

“You run into cannon-fire, Philippe, so your opinion on risk is somewhat... biased”, she reminds him, which he takes with easy grace. “And as it happens, the protegee seems quite capable of holding her own. Honestly, it’s a little funny. He doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with someone he can’t intimidate or seduce.”

Seras might be a flower-girl but she’s no wilting daisy. It hadn’t taken Integra long to realize that. In fact, it had only taken one screaming match between Master and pupil for her to come to terms with it; she’d walked away laughing and confused them both.

In fact, she rather thinks Seras and Philippe might get along if only he could stop every single thing that he says from sounding like the worst innuendo. Nevertheless, it’s Vlada she’s truly worried about. 

He can be the possessive sort, even on a good day.

“Then trust the expert”, Philippe teases her as they make their way down the hallway and up the stairs to the box. “Now! — who is the marvel who can stand against him?”

He sweeps in with the confidence of the wealthy and handsome; welcomed in every room he's ever entered. Instantly, a Cockney accent blisters the air.

“YOU!”

Integra, following in on the tails of Philippe's topcoat, has never been addressed so casually in her life. But it would appear that she isn’t the intended target of Seras’ wrath; rather, she’s simply collateral damage. 

Pip shifts beside her, and she cuts him and his bloody nose a look.

An angel of music, a Valkyrie with a sharp right hook…

_No._

“HIM?!”, Vlada snarls, sounding murderous.

_Oh no._

“It’s her!” At her side, Pip sounds rapturous. Integra would weep if she didn’t feel so much like laughing. The noise that does escape sounds like a dying cat.

“Integra, that’s her! The Valkyrie, _la belle dame sans merci_ , ah, beautiful Aeode. Integra, you have found an angel, the angel of music”, he whispers _sotto voce_. She’s never seen him quite this moon-eyed over a girl; what’s worse, it’s probably not the concussion speaking.

He’s not taken his eyes off of Seras, thereby committing the cardinal sin of ignoring Vlada. Her dear, stupid, silly friend; Vlada is going to eat him alive.

“Maestro, that’s him!” Seras’s voice is high, nearly shrill in the upper registers and nasal with fury. Vlada will undoubtedly disapprove of it. But then Integra snaps her brain into focus, listening to what Seras is shrieking about.

“That’s the bugger what prepositioned me!”, she barks, more fishmonger than flower-girl, and certainly nowhere near approximating a lady of any stature or repute. Vlada moves to plant himself between Philippe and Seras, blocking Integra's view of the soprano.

Up goes her voice, into the rafters. Integra thinks she hears the crystal chandelier ringing. If Seras shatters it, Integra hopes Pip will replace it; she's grown fond of the damned thing.

“Let me at him, Maestro, let me go! I’m going to box the red right out of his hair!”

_“_ Sweet _Christ”_ , Integra groans, at wit’s end and desperately craving a smoke. “Philippe! What did you say this time?!”

For his part, Pip just grins. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes for the nerds amongst us: 
> 
> Col Pugno: A musical notation meaning, "With the fist". 
> 
> "Be not afraid" is the traditional way that angels greet humans in the Bible, probably because Angels are described as looking fucking terrifying. Seras is insinuating that Integra is scarier than something with a whack of eyes and wings spouting flames; she would not be wrong. 
> 
> Dancing would have been a skill chorus girls (and the prima donnas they aspired to become) would learn early; often as children. Seras, who joins the chorus as an adult, is essentially doing an accelerated curriculum to catch up. She doesn't like it very much. 
> 
> A dandy would be a fashionable, wealthy young man -- think Oscar Wilde, or a Regency rake. Bodices be ripping. 
> 
> Himself -- is an old-fashioned way to refer to the titular lord of the manor. 
> 
> "Your Grace" would be the appropriate title for a Prince or Grand Duke. Curiously, the surname "Bernadotte" is, in fact, a surname associated with the Swedish Royal House. It was entirely too convenient to pass up! 
> 
> La belle dame sans merci is, of course a reference to Keats -- it's the story of a young knight who is ensnared by a beautiful woman, "a faerie", who sings to him and lures him into the fairy-world from which he does not escape. 
> 
> Aoede is one of the original (Boetian) muses; the sister of Melete and Mneme, Aoede is the Muse of voice and song. Yes. Pip is super extra.


	10. Feurig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miss Seras — 
> 
> I seem to have committed a grave faux-pas, and for that, I am sincerely sorry. It was not my intention to be rude, nor to offend, but have accomplished both never the less. I’m an ass.
> 
> Please accept my most humble apologies, and these flowers. 
> 
> They are cheerful, and made me think of you.
> 
> Pip —

Seras peers into her dressing room with bleary-eyed surprise. Overnight, a small posy has appeared on her vanity table. It’s nothing extravagant — not even particularly expensive — but they’re winter daisies, ivory-white and cheerful as fresh snowfall.

 

Her favourites. 

 

There’s a note with them, but she doesn’t need to feel the linen-soft paper or see the rich black India ink to know who sent this. 

 

Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back, so she tears the envelope open with her fingers and fishes the note out. Her stomach is a tangle, but her hands are steady. 

 

~

 

_Miss Seras —  
_

_I seem to have committed a grave faux-pas, and for that, I am sincerely sorry. It was not my intention to be rude, nor to offend, but have accomplished both never the less. I’m an ass._

 

_Please accept my most humble apologies, and these flowers._

 

_They are cheerful, and made me think of you._

 

_Pip —_

 

_~_

 

The paper shakes in her hand. A few petals drop from the posy he’d attached; the scent of the flowers is enough to transport her to simpler, lonelier, times. He’d bought her flowers, like any other fine gent for a lady. If he’d left it at that, she’d never have given him another thought. 

 

But he’s apologizing, and the novelty of that is too good to pass up.

 

The winter daisies are a nice touch, too; they’re no yellow rose but she likes them more. She’d mentioned it over that disastrous dinner, wholly in passing, and apparently, he’d remembered. 

 

She tries not to like him for it and fails. 

 

_Pip._

 

_He signs his letters Pip._

 

Sitting in the dressing room she shares with three other girls, Seras smiles into the bouquet he’s sent her. 

 

—

 

Philippe tucks some francs into the little messenger’s pocket and waves them away. The little chorus-boy scampers away on quiet feet, leaving Pip to the agony of indecision. If he opens the letter, he will know for certain if his apology has been accepted. If yes, then he shall be one step closer to the woman of his dreams. If no — 

 

It does not bear considering. A powder-keg does not strike twice. 

 

The letter in his hand is temptation itself, but then again, he’s never met one he doesn’t want to indulge. The letter-opener flashes like a rapier in his hand, and he extricates the letter with shaking fingers. 

 

He can hear her speak as he reads.

 

She’s got such a way about her; she’s as bold and beautiful as summer. The sunny little soprano with a vicious right hook has knocked the scales from his eyes. He imagines her writing this letter, and can’t help but smile.   
  
Would her tongue stick out, the way it had when she’d concentrated on her footwork? Or would her eyes sparkle the way they did when she’d castigated him? Would she be smiling, or glowering like a little thundercloud at him?

 

Would her nose crinkle, the way it had when she’d tried to stifle giggles?

 

He wants to make her laugh. He wants to see her light up again, eyes bright with passion for her art. He even wants the storms of her temper; wants to see Seras bloom like a winter rose. 

 

Integra knows. He’d confessed after dinner and over brandy, hapless and helpless to resist, and she’d laughed for a good five minutes at his expense. He concedes he might have earned that. 

 

To distract himself from his prickling dignity, he turns his attention back to the letter. 

 

~

 

_Your Majesty,_

 

He grins. He can all but taste the vinegar.

 

_I shall absolutely not call you Pip. The Maestro tells me you’re the Prince of somewhere or other, and Princes don’t get called_ Pip _. The Monsieur’s etiquette book concurs. I will, however, concede to your rank; you were a Captain in the Army, you said?_ Captain Bernadotte. _It has a nice ring to it._

 

_Very well. If you insist on sticking around, I shall call you that._

 

_The daisies were overkill, but a good call. They’re pretty and just as common as me, so we’re square. All’s well that ends well, if no harm’s done._

 

_I am not sorry for smacking you one._

 

_Seras —_  
  
~ 

 

Pip immediately makes his way to his writing desk. He’s never traded love letters with a girl before, but there’s a sweetness and charm to it that he’s coming to enjoy. No wonder his dear friend found such joy in it. 

 

The ink curls across the page, even as a grin quirks the corner of his mouth. He serves himself a cigarette and settles into his chair.   
  
~

 

_Dearest Seras —_

 

_If no harm is done? Ma Chere, you broke my nose! But never fret: the reward of your introduction was worth the price of admission._

 

_As for sticking around, as you say — you shall simply need to resign yourself to my continued presence! I have signed the papers today, mignonette; it is done._

 

_You are now thoroughly stuck with me._

 

_Shall we be friends?_

 

_Pip —_

 

_~_

 

_Captain Bernadotte,_

 

_You must be aware that everything you say is a double entendre. The price of admission, really?_

 

_~_

 

_Seras —_

 

_A pound of flesh, no? What were_ you _thinking, mignonette?_

 

_Pip —_

 

_~_

 

_Captain Bernadotte,_  
  
  
Don’t you try to turn that on me, Captain. It just won’t work; I didn't fall off the turnip cart yesterday.

 

_Say, what’s with the flowers in my dressing room? The first posy was cute, but the whole room’s gone over daisies. It’s a bloody meadow in here; we’re dabbing our toe-shoes in pollen._

 

_S —_

 

_~_

 

_Because they make you smile, Mignonette._

 

_P —_

 

_~_

 

 

And so it goes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_“Absolutely not!”_

 

The songbird’s tone goes shrill as her voice flies into the top of her range. Integra looks back down to the papers on her desk. Let Alucard handle his prima donna. 

 

“It is not for you to contest, Fraülein!”, he snaps, true to form; his temper flares to the forefront. How he’s managed to make the mask look angry is beyond her, but he succeeds nevertheless. She’s always thought his anger was something remarkable to behold; compelling in the way of storms, or fires.

 

Her man demands notice. 

 

The young soprano quails before him, as Integra had known she would. 

 

“The decision has been made. There will be open auditions for the part of Christine”, the Count informs her. His tone brooks no contradiction, but the foolish girl attempts one anyways. 

 

“But—!”, Miss van Winkle starts, and that is one step too far past the pale. Integra will not tolerate insubordination towards Vlada. He is her conductor, her genius; the chit is a high-strung soprano with a powerful patron. 

 

Integra looks down at the folio on her desk — 

 

The Prince’s signature is written in stark black ink. Integra signs in oxblood, to match the seal she applies with a steady hand. 

 

The Major has just been rendered irrelevant; his pet _wilis_ is now wholly expendable. The calculus is clear, and years of biting her tongue bubble over. Integra smiles, and it even feels cold. 

 

To hell with this. 

 

“That is quite enough, Miss van Winkle! This is not a discussion”, Integra says frostily, nipping this temper tantrum in the bud. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

 

That only seems to ruffle Miss van Winkle’s feathers. 

 

“This is her fault!”, she spits, apoplectic. Her pale cheeks are cherry red with fury. “The blonde girl, that shabby little street-urchin. The Maestro will give her the part, I know this!” 

 

“I will do no such thing”, the Count purrs, so coolly that butter would not melt in his mouth. “It is a blind audition, Fraülein, adjudicated by a panel of judges. You stand every chance of succeeding. In fact, it is your role to _lose_.” 

 

The emphasis is as delicate and pointed as a dagger blade; the sort one slides between the ribs and into the tender meat of the heart.

 

“Ah, and such a balm this is to my feelings”, their soprano sneers, nose in the air. “You bring home a puppy, Maestro, and try to teach her to howl. It is sweet, yes, but is she howling at the moon also? The dressing rooms are small, Monsieur; we see who comes and goes.” She pauses, _l’appel_ _du vide_ , and then continues. “The Prince is a patron, yes?” 

 

There is a quiet pause, and Integra knows what’s coming next. 

 

“… _Her_ patron, no?”, the girl murmurs slyly, and Integra wishes she could slap the smugness clear out of her. She slowly rises to her feet, fingers bracing against the wood of her desk, against the cream-coloured parchment of her coup d’etat. 

 

When she meets the younger woman’s eyes, she knows her own must be frigid with fury and triumph.

 

“Miss van Winkle”, Integra says, voice very low and very, very dangerous. “Be very careful in selecting your next words. I do not tolerate slander in my theatre.” 

 

“Ah, do not be so joyless, Monsieur! She is young, and beautiful… and he is silly and rich. She would not be alone in her pursuit of him, but wonders unceasing — he seems to return the tendresse. That is good! He should keep her… and keep her out of my opera!” 

 

As soon as she says it, Rip van Winkle realizes that she has made a grave and terrible error. 

 

“ _Your_ opera?” 

 

Vlada has unfolded himself to his full height, and he towers over the already-tall girl. The mask, bone-white, is an eerie counterpart to his presence; it adds menace to an already cruel face. Integra could intervene. 

 

“Maestro, I…” 

 

Integra does not. 

 

“ ** _SILENCE!!!_** ”

 

He prowls closer with deadly poise. Integra is reminded of a panther on the hunt, or else an owl; some nocturnal predator out for fresh prey. It would appear that their silly little songbird has caught the attention she’s wanted so badly. 

 

“ _Your_ opera?”, he sneers, cold with rage. “Your opera?! It is no such thing, Fraülein! Your patron thought you were worth a light fixture, and you own nothing here but your voice.” 

 

Integra grimaces behind her steepled hands; that’s a cruel fact to throw in the girl’s face. 

 

“Your career belongs to the woman who stands there, Miss van Winkle. She owns the pretty costumes you wear, and the greasepaint and glitter; the light fixtures and balconies, and the orchestra and stages too. She owns the seats and the arses that sit in them; she owns the audiences who offer you that drug you so desperately crave. My Monsieur owns their adoration, and decides who they shall offer it to.” 

 

“Count…”, Integra starts; it will do them no good if this girl trots off to an assignation with her patron in hysterics and starts telling tales out of school. But Vlada, for once, stops her in her tracks. 

 

“No, Monsieur!”, he cuts her off, catching her wrong-footed. “Fraülein — you do not own this opera! Your Major may pay for your upkeep, Rip van Winkle, but my Monsieur owns _you_.” 

 

_Oh, bollocks_ , Integra thinks. _Now he’s done it. There will be war backstage now._

 

“You _dare_?!” 

 

The shriek hits a high A, and Integra would be impressed if it hadn’t felt a little like a sonic lobotomy.

 

“I do dare, Miss van Winkle! Leave, if I have so injured your pride! Pack your bags and be gone! The role shall still be auditioned, and some other girl will receive the applause, the roses, the adulation of the masses. And that girl shall not be you, but she will thank you in her prayers that night!” 

 

And just like that, the gauntlet is thrown; what he has said can not be taken back.

 

Integra has never seen Vlada so incandescent with rage, and she’s seen him literally commit manslaughter. She wonders if Miss van Winkle will dare to show her face again; she’d better, if she wants the bloody part. 

 

Her Maestro thunders onwards, disdain in every syllable. 

 

Don’t threaten me with favours, Fraülein”, Vlada sneers. “I dare you now — defy me once more!” 

 

But the girl does not dare. She dips an insultingly perfunctory curtsey to Integra, eyes the Maestro warily, and edges towards the door. Integra notices that Miss van Winkle is careful not to turn her back to them, and thinks that might be the cleverest thing she’s done all day. 

 

Once the door is shut, and locked, and Integra has assured herself that any little birdies have flapped off down the hallway, she settles back into her seat with a heavy sigh. 

Massaging her temples against an incipient headache, she turns her attention back to the man tense as a violin string in the corner. 

 

“Vlada?” 

 

He turns to look at her slowly, and she thinks she sees concern in his gaze. She frowns at him, mostly in worry. 

 

“I’m not sure that was wise”, she admits, and he nods. 

 

“I expect it was not”, he admits, all fury deflated into an air of discontentment. She lights a cigarillo, taking a luxurious inhale and enjoying the calming buzz of nicotine. She exhales slowly and feels her jaw unclench. “I am sorry, Integra.” 

 

“Ah well”, she says. “What’s done is done. You’ve needled that girl into a fury, Vlada, and no doubt she’ll go chirping into her dear patron’s ears.” Integra pauses for a moment, mulling something over. “You heard what she said about Miss Victoria.” 

 

“Call her Seras, Integra.” 

 

“That would be far too casual”, Integra demurs and then shrugs off a little weight. “Your flower-girl is in for trouble, Vlada. I should think Miss van Winkle will retaliate. She is… not well.” 

 

It is by far the kindest way to phrase it, and Vlad snorts under his breath. 

 

“It’s like watching a bird in a gilded cage”, Integra muses, mostly to herself. Her voice is soft and grim. “She’s throwing herself against the bars, all for the chance to peck someone’s eyes out.” It isn’t a happy image, and she chews on her concern for a moment. 

 

When he speaks, it’s so low she almost doesn’t hear it. 

 

“I’ll break her wings if she tries, Integra”, Vlada murmurs, and Integra knows he means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feurig - Music Notation, German. "Fiery" 
> 
> The charming prince eats some crow while the winter daisy makes new enemies. 
> 
> As always, reviews, kudos and <3 feed your humble writer, and are deeply appreciated.


	11. Feierlich

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Maestro had an… artistic temperament, and to put it as kindly as possible, he terrified the professional piss out of the entire company. He was a big man, tall and broad and capable of filling a room with his razor focus — but he could move as silently as a phantasm. When he was peeling someone for a mistake, it felt as though there were a million eyes on you and none of them friendly. 
> 
> But nobody could argue with the results.

 

“It is unfair!”, Rip wails in the privacy of her dressing room. “It is _unfair_!” 

 

She paces and paces, picking at her fingers until the cuticles bleed. She’s always had a bad habit of wandering goat-paths into the Turkish rugs when she’s… distracted, and Zorin feels anxious just watching her.

 

“Of course it is”, Zorin agrees. She’s planted herself by the door as is her wont. The cane she carries everywhere rests against the door-jamb, ready at a moment’s notice. From this post, she’s able to watch Rip in the reflection of the large dressing mirror. 

 

Even sub fusc, Zorin Blitz reeks of menace. She wouldn’t be a very good bodyguard otherwise. 

 

“They’re doing this to spite you”, she continues, voice ugly with certainty. “That little upstart… her, sing _Christine_?!” 

 

She scoffs; the thought really is funny. Some nobody know-nothing plucked out of a gutter, draped in silks and taught to sing on command like a parakeet, trying to do better than Rip. “Anyways, what does that cast-iron bitch know? The girl’s a stray they picked up off the street! One or the other — or _both_! — are fucking her.” 

 

“You should not say these things, Zorin! Or at least… not where anyone might hear you say them”, Rip murmurs, sounding a little scandalized. “But no. I do not think that is true. The Monsieur is frigid, everyone knows that.” 

 

Zorin isn’t sure she believes it. The Maestro and his Monsieur may be consummate professionals, but Zorin is observant. She sees what others miss, and what others keep hidden. 

 

She’s very good at her job, and so she has no doubt that the two are lovers of long-standing. If nothing else, the ease with which they act around each other reminds her acutely of she and Rip, in the privacy of backstage dressing rooms and dormitory bedrooms. 

 

But that recognition means nothing to her. If she’s got to chose between the lives of the Hellsing iron maiden and her lover, or hers and Rip’s? 

 

It’s not even a debate. 

 

Nevertheless, if it makes Rip happy to think that Integra Hellsing isn’t making anything more than music with that Transylvanian freak, she’ll keep up the polite fiction. What could be the harm?

 

Zorin bites her tongue and keeps the tremulous, tear-stained peace. 

 

“I think she — the little idiot, you understand — is sleeping with the Prince. I would not begrudge her that if only he were not underwriting her whole little vanity project!” 

 

The fact that the Major once did the same with her probably makes the sting worse. Rip had sold her soul and a few other sweetmeats to the Major for a shot at the stage, but debts come due. 

 

The costs are very high, and so are the risks. 

 

She won’t tolerate risk. Not when it comes to Rip. The sword of Damocles weighs heavy above her neck.

 

“Ambitious little bitch”, Zorin mutters, because it’s true and because it’s expected of her. Rip rewards her with a watery smile; wavering like sunlight through water. She’s always been beautiful when she cries. 

 

Zorin hates that the Major agrees. 

 

“Don’t worry, mein vogel; you’ll get the part.” 

 

“She is very good, Zorin. _Very_ good”, Rip confesses in a throaty whisper, and worries at a hangnail until it bleeds. “I may not, and if so… what will the Major say then? He will… he will be very angry indeed.” 

 

That is a spectacular understatement on Rip’s part.

 

Zorin is well aware of the depths the Major is prepared to sink to in order to achieve his goals. He’s truly sadistic. Zorin despises the man, but they owe him a debt he’s not inclined to forgive. She has no doubt that if the Major so wanted, he could demand Rip pay with her life. 

 

If Rip fails to secure this role, that bill may come due. He has a menagerie of maniacs ready to act out his smallest whim. Zorin herself is a part of it, so she knows that she would lose that battle, and God knows what would happen to Rip after that.

 

“It won’t come to that”, she assures Rip, but that’s not a promise she can truly offer. Nowhere to run, no place to hide; she and Rip are two lame ducks waiting on the hunter’s leisure. 

 

“He says he needs me here. What good am I if I must leave the company? What good am I to a man who needs me to draw eyes, when I am nothing but another girl in the chorus? Or worse, displaced by a street-urchin?!” 

 

Rip can barely breathe now, hands fluttering at her throat and tears in her eyes. She’s gulping in short, jerky breaths, barely holding herself together by the nails. Zorin shifts, pushing off the wall and coming to wrap her arms around her lover. 

 

As soon as she does, Rip sags like a cut cord, resting her cheek against Zorin’s shoulder. The soprano is waifish in the extreme, which has always served to make Zorin feel especially protective of her. She cradles the fine bones of Rip’s skull, holding her against her as though she can serve as a bulwark against all the awfulness of the world. 

 

She needs to solve this. Needs to fix this, before it makes Rip worse. She just can’t see a way to do it yet. “I hate the thought that he needs you at all”, Zorin mutters into the dark crown of Rip’s hair. 

 

“Yes”, Rip murmurs, but then the mania takes hold and away she goes, pushing away wild-eyed and picking at her cuticles again. Zorin can see blood under her nails but knows better than to reprimand her for it. With her like this, it would only make it worse. 

 

“I wish, ah, Zorin, how I wish… — _Farewell past, happy dreams of days gone by. The roses in my cheeks already are faded_ ….” The music cuts in, mania grabbing her by the throat and squeezing until melody escapes. It’s beautifully done, a lamentation worthy of Verdi. “Ah, Zorin, I wish so badly to be free.” 

 

The melancholy in her voice would break Zorin’s heart if it weren’t already in shards.

 

“This run will be enough to pay him off, Rip.” Zorin tries to reassure her, but she can tell it won’t work now. Still, she’s stubborn, and it never hurts to try — except when it does. Still, there’s no pain she wouldn’t bear for Rip if only to make her lover’s burden lighter. “You will have to endure until then. I will watch your back”, she promises, because that she can guarantee. “You are not alone, Rip, no matter what he says.” 

 

Her voice is a low growl of emotion, thick with anger. It seems to help, because the songbird retreats back into the shelter of Zorin’s open arms, huddling up against her. 

 

“I know”, Rip whispers and sounds so grateful that Zorin can hardly bear it. 

 

“But you need to get the part”, Zorin mutters, and though she hadn’t intended Rip to hear, she does. Fortunately, she seems calmed by the embrace, and so does not fly away. Not just yet, though Zorin knows she soon will. 

 

“I do, and I do not know that I shall. The Maestro was very angry with me today; I have never seen him so furious! I shall have to be above reproach, Zorin. I cannot fail in this, or we shall never be free. Never, not _ever_! Ah, to be the Huntsman, my darling; he need only be lucky once, whereas the rabbit must be fortunate all the time!” 

 

“Rip…” 

 

She can feel the mania swelling again; Rip squirms in her grip until she’s obliged to release her. So she does, because she knows better than to try and fight it. Rip resumes pacing, voice crackling with nerves. 

 

“ _In life’s springtime days, happiness escaped me…”_ Her voice goes high and sorrowful. A Lacrimosa, cathedral-pure. “See it flee, see it? There, Zorin!” 

 

The eyes Zorin loves so much track something invisible on its path across the room, and she feels a creep crawl down her spine. 

 

“My loyal sweetheart, my one love”, Rip laments, crooning at the bottom of her range. Her eyes are open wide; vacant and beautiful as a doll. “I am sorry, so _sorry_ , for how I have wronged you. Tying you here to me; ah, I have been cruel to you… Forgive me, dearest.” 

 

For all the ways that everything’s gone, she’s still never regretted this. She’s told Rip that, hundreds of times at least, but still. Whenever she gets like this, the old fear rises to the surface like some deep-ocean predator come to feed at night. It eats her alive, and Zorin is obliged to watch. 

 

Still, she tries every time. 

 

“Rip, you’ve never wronged me. I am where I care to be.” It’s never reassured her yet, but at least she never stops reminding her.

 

“The truth, Zorin. The truth!” Up goes her voice; high… _thrillingly_ high. She’s always loved Rip’s voice; it’s like the taste of stolen plums in the sweet heat of summer. “I dared to speak it, and these chains…” 

 

If the world is a stage, Rip van Winkle is its prima donna. She lifts her hands to the invisible audience; a grand diva’s gesture. Bracelets — all of them gifts from the Major — twinkle in the light. Zorin knows her weights, and between the lavallières and assorted ring, broaches and bobs, she’d clocked the weight of them at almost half a pound of diamonds. 

 

They make Rip sparkle, but it had been a bad bargain the day she accepted them. She knows it, too. “They are my reward. I drown in diamonds!” Her voice is at its limit, fingertips red, and Zorin has never once seen her so badly done by. 

 

“ _Le bracelet et le collier! Dieu! C’est comme une main qui sur mon bras se pose!”_

 

The song is meant to be sung happily; instead, she sounds horrified by something only she can see. Rip scratches compulsively at her arm; the long sleeves Zorin dresses her in keep her nails from scoring her flesh. 

 

_“Ah! Ah! Ah, je ris de me voir si belle dans ce miroir!_ ” 

 

There’s little that will stop her from the madness now, and Zorin can taste it in the air, cloyingly sweet. Insanity smells like the camellia perfume the Major _requests_ Rip wear, and the scent of it is ripe in the air now. 

 

_Mater Dolorosa, mater misericordiae…”,_ Rip croons, back to the hymns, and Zorin blurts the first thing that comes to mind. 

 

“How _Papist_ , Rip”, she teases, in the hopes of getting a sentence that’s delivered in full consciousness, and not in coloratura. 

 

“Ha! Zorin, mother of tears, mother of sorrows. She sees all, forgives all. She hears our prayers.” She whispers it, and her eyes are wide. Her pupils are dilated, and Zorin’s skin crawls. 

 

“I don’t pray, Rip.” 

 

“I do”, Rip whispers, twining her hands around and around and around again. “For you. For me. I do not see a way out of this, but I pray just the same. At every turn, an enemy; dared teeth or bared steel — the hunter or the hound! Zorin, I am frightened, _frightened_!” 

 

Her voice rises higher than heaven at the last, and now Zorin must be concerned about self-sabotage. She knows Rip is the sort of bird that plucks out her feathers for lack of anything better to do. 

 

She cannot allow her to ruin her voice. Then they truly will be left with only prayer to save them. 

 

“Shh, Rip, shh”, she soothes, though it does no good. “Hush now. Rest. You mustn’t exert your voice; you’ll need it for rehearsals. I’ll look for a way out. I’ll find us a way out, you’ll see.” She clings to the coloratura, to her childhood sweetheart; the other half of her heart, walking around vulnerable and bleeding. 

 

She can hardly protect her, but she would burn the world simply to see her safe. But it’s the deaf leading the blind, and a labyrinth to escape from. 

 

“You’ll see”, Zorin promises and buries her face in Rip’s hair. The scent of camellias is cloying in her nose, but Zorin doesn’t let go.

 

 

— 

 

 

Seras’s pen flies over the paper, even as she thinks back years. 

 

_That season was to be the Monsieur’s triumph: the culmination of years of strategy and quiet patience. Integra mightn’t have been musical herself, but she’d had a real knack for administration._

 

_And her faith in the Maestro had been cast-iron; she’d been resolute in her decisions and she trusted his judgement absolutely. The results had made them both fabulously powerful in our little hothouse of a world._

 

_The Maestro, you must understand, was a legitimate genius._

 

_A once in a generation talent, the bleeding edge of our art. He carried it well: opera cloaks and gleaming black silk tuxedos, dark hair wild and a bone-white mask hiding the left side of his face. He was some Transylvanian count who had composed on campaign; handsome and wounded and darkly expressive when he commanded his opera._

 

_The Monsieur, brilliant in her own science, had turned him into her star conductor and her opera into the talk of the Continent. Now, with the Prince of Pontecorvo’s patronage, she was free to make him her composer, as well._

 

_But the Maestro had an… artistic temperament, and to put it as kindly as possible, he terrified the professional piss out of the entire company. He was a big man, tall and broad and capable of filling a room with his razor focus — but he could move as silently as a phantasm. When he was peeling someone for a mistake, it felt as though there were a million eyes on you and none of them friendly._

 

_But nobody could argue with the results, and the weak quickly dropped out to be replaced by stronger stock. As a result, the company was superb and as disciplined as soldiers — which isn’t to say there weren’t internal politics._

 

_Like all groups obliged to share dormitories and days together, there was… some friction._

 

_All my wishes had come true… I had a roof and food and new shoes — even if they were those bloody_ ballet _slippers — and best of all, I had a big stage and rafters higher than Heaven._

 

_But only then did it occur to be careful what I’d wished for._

 

 

 

It had been an ugly lesson to learn. Even now, a life-time after the fact, she can feel her cheeks prickle in humiliation and anger. Her hands still instinctively make fists on the pen, even if they shake with age instead of rage these days. 

 

 

~ 

 

 

“Wonder what they’ll say at this afternoon’s all-cast?” 

 

It’s an English girl Seras knows in passing, and not one she can say she particularly likes. Despite being countrymen, the girl had rejected any overtures of friendship. The girls here are colleagues first and foremost, a fact that had been made blisteringly clear shortly after she’d turned up. 

 

Rivalries and enemies are common; friendships don’t make it through the audition process. 

 

They all know how she came to join the Company, after all; the flower-girl who charmed their formidable bosses somehow. None trusted her; upon reflection, Seras concedes the wisdom in that. She would tell Monsieur Integra about any mutinies.

 

And while they might all turn their noses up at Seras, the entire company clutches their collective pearls when herself sits Box Five and watches the Maestro stalk around the stage. 

 

Or well, most of them, anyway. A rare few are brave, but Seras’ mum always said that bravery and stupidity were kissing cousins. 

 

“Who cares?”, an insouciant French ballerina asks with a sly grin. “I wonder what she’ll wear!” 

 

There’s a collective rustle of interest from the flock of dancers; they look like so many softly coloured doves cooing in a cote, in pink and tulle and toe shoes. 

 

“The pant-suit prin- _cess_? She’s ballsy, to wear trousers like that”, the English girl says, with bawdy approval. “But then, what’s she got to prove, hey? She’s richer than Midas and posh as the Queen. And her wardrobe doesn’t seem to put the man off none, hey?” From where she’s perched, Seras watches as the girl tosses her dark hair, tone insinuating.

 

Seras’s cheeks flush a brilliant red; she emphatically wishes she were anywhere but here, listening to girls that don’t like her talk shite about people she considers friends. What’s worse is that she can’t really disagree. The two of them aren’t taking any pains to be subtle about their affair.

 

“The Maestro’s a beast of a different coat”, the French girl says, nose in the air. 

 

“Hm,”, the English girl agrees. “Mad as a hatter, him. But a genius!” She says it like a prayer against the evil eye, looking around to be sure she hasn’t been spied upon. The Maestro has ears like a bloody bat, and eyes everywhere. 

 

Seras would know; she’s probably a pair herself. 

 

“But a genius”, the girls dutifully echo, and Seras rolls her eyes. Honestly, it’s like they never grew backbones; you only had to stand up for yourself and the Maestro would offer at least a smear of respect. 

 

“And speaking of hatters, have you seen Fraülein van Winkle these days? Long sleeves again.” The French girl again, cutting with disdain. She tilts her pert nose upwards. “Past her prime, no?”

 

The other girls cross themselves; it’s a dreaded fate. 

 

“Poor wee lamb”, breathes the English rose with false sincerity. Her tone is cloying. “She’s back to plucking her feathers again. “That sort of girl wasn’t meant for the stage. Her constitution’s just too delicate.” 

 

“Her sanity, you mean”, another girl murmurs and the giggles erupt again. Seras is stricken by how unkind they are.

 

“Better she should go and leave the part to you?” The French girl snorts. “For her health, n’est pas?” 

 

The English girl laughs. “Wouldn’t it be nice? But it would appear someone else is gunning for it, so odds are I wouldn’t have a shot. The puppy’s liable to get her chance at Westminster.” She’s cannibalistic in her ambition, but that doesn’t bother Seras any. She knows she’s the best of the lot; rehearsals have made that clear. 

 

“Doesn’t seem fair, does it Carmilla?” The girl continues, absolutely ruthless as the other girls lean in. Gossipy as hens, the lot of them. “The Fraülein has her _herr_ and the flower-girl’s showing her rose bush to some patron for a part.”

 

The French girl quirks a cruel smile in return; it’s clear the two are ringleaders. “I have heard the new patron’s a prince, _and_ that he is a man of many appetites and fickle interests. I can believe it; he’s got the look to him. Prince _Charmant_ , see? It would seem he is after our sweet Cendrillon and her pantoufle de vair.” 

 

“No lie? No wonder Fraülein’s off her tits! Compared to hers? — _lord!_ And that awful chaperone of hers? God knows what _that’s_ about. ” 

 

Well, _damn_!” There’s meanness in the broad Northern accent now. “Canny wee bint, isn’t she?

“I am liable to chew glass myself.” The French girl sounds as though she genuinely means it. Seras hates them both with sudden violence. 

 

“Wouldn’t that kill you?” 

 

“Mon Dieu”, the French girl breathes when she realizes the other girl is serious. “Laura, darling, don’t hurt yourself thinking.” The other girl flicks her with a finger. It breaks the tension and the feeding frenzy dissipates. 

 

“Ah, bollocks”, Laura groans, catching sight of their dancing master approaching. “We’ve missed our cue!” They all rise like startled hens, rustling in their tulle.   
  
Seras exits stage left, stomach churning.

 

Zorin, hiding in the shadows of the wings, stays stock-rooted in place with fingers white-knuckled around the head of her cane. When she sees her reflection in the backstage mirror, her eyes are wild with fury. 

 

She isn’t sure how long she stands there, apoplectic, but the ballerinas have long dispersed to their rehearsals by the time she’s jolted out of her reverie by a little cough. She whips around, shattered nerves making her unclasp the cane from its sheath. 

 

The little blonde boy grins, holding up his hands. 

 

“No need for friendly fire, Zorin!” He’s too saccharine to really mean it; he’d stab her in the back if he thought he could get away with it. The Major doesn’t employ useless individuals, and he is particularly fond of Schrodinger, so Zorin’s careful to sheath the blade and keep her expression neutral. 

 

“I have a letter.” 

 

Zorin doesn’t care for the sounds of that, but she’s not in a position to decline. She holds her hand out, silently. He skips forward with a mischievous smile on his face and it chills her to the soul. She’s seen him wear it when he’s pulled the wings off of gnats. 

 

Teacher’s pet, indeed. 

 

He delivers the letter with exaggerated fanfare and then bounds away, disappearing down into the depths of the opera house with the cheerful confidence of the other errand-boys. The Maestro might have eyes everywhere, she thinks with dull fury, but so does the Major. 

 

She stares at the note in her hand and decides it might be better to read this one in private. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feierlich (Ger.)  
> Solemn, solemnly
> 
> She lives!  
> Okay but seriously, this chapter was a real challenge to write. I truly believe that well-written villains truly believe they're the heroes of their own stories. That said, how do you humanize two characters as absolutely cat-crap nuts as Zorin Blitz and Rip van Winkle? I hope I managed it while still doing (in)justice to the characterization. Thank you for your patience, everyone!
> 
> Yes, they're dating. Yes, the Major is blackmailing them with it, since it would be social, financial and legal ruin for the both of them. Yes, he's a scumbag. 
> 
> Allusions and references:  
> "Farewell past, happy dreams of days gone by. The roses in my cheeks already are faded"; "In life’s springtime days, happiness escaped me" - Addio, el passato", also known as Violetta's aria in Verdi's "La Traviata". 
> 
> "Le bracelet et le collier! Dieu! C’est comme une main qui sur mon bras se pose!"; “Ah! Ah! Ah, je ris de me voir si belle dans ce miroir!” - "The Jewel Song", Marguerite's aria from Faust.
> 
> "Mater Dolorosa, mater misericordiae" are names for Mary, mother of Christ, after his Crucifixion. It's a traditional motif in Renaissance art and a pretty grim one at that. #Catholicaesthetic, because if it's good enough for the Met Gala...
> 
> Le Cendrillon is the Perrault version of Cinderella. There is some debate about the homonyms verre/vair; "pantoufle de verre" is a glass slipper. "Pantoufle de vair" is a *fur* slipper, which gives "trying it on" a drastically different insinuation. 
> 
> Laura & Carmilla are exactly who you think :} 
> 
>  
> 
> A simple request if you've read this far: I'd love feedback on Zorin and Rip! They're a bit of an authorial challenge for me, and I'd love to hear what you thought of it! Darts? Laurels? I'd appreciate either! (Please and thanks!)

**Author's Note:**

> I blame you, Pastabae. You know who you are and this is all your fault. <3


End file.
